First Student Drivers Demand Improved Turnover Rates

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Several hundred First Student school bus drivers took to the streets to protest what they call substandard quality of service and resulting safety issues promulgated by high turnover rates, a ploy the company said is aimed at forcing other employees to join a union.

 "When you can't retain skilled drivers who would like to stay but can't afford to support their families you have really high turnover," said Mike Blain, a spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based Service Employees International Union, a demonstration co-sponsor.

SEIU is partnered with the Teamsters union and England's Transport & General Workers Union. The disagreement came amid discussions by the British government to implement the American yellow school bus throughout the United Kingdom. Currently, First Student's parent company First Group of Aberdeen, Scotland operates yellow buses in 11 cities.

Religious and community leaders and parents joined the Duval County school bus workers in an Oct. 20 rally and proceeded to march to First Student's regional headquarters. They presented managers with a signed petition calling on the company to do more to reward skilled employees and to stem high staff turnover.

 Blain added that the labor coalition was willing to partner with First Student to "raise standards without putting them at a competitive disadvantage," presumably by coming to a compensation agreement. But letters to corporate outlining its requests have gone unanswered.

 First Student said the allegations are without merit and constitute a thinly-veiled attempt to force the company's hand at recognizing unlawfully-formed unions.

  "Their agenda is to unionize all of the yellow school bus industry in the United States," said Carey Paster, First Student's president and CEO. "But the difference in what they believe and what we believe is that we believe our employees have the right to a secret ballot as granted by the National Labor Relations Act and the SEIU would like a peace and harmony agreement.

They want to say, 'If a person wants to belong to the union, than the union wants to be recognized.' We believe if people want to join the union there should be a secret ballot vote as is done across all industries across the U.S."

A legal expert explained that the dispute has nothing to do with school bus safety and everything thing to do with economics.

"All human beings are self-interested people. This is not about the general public," said Michael Harper, a labor law professor at Harvard and Boston University. "The union is criticizing the product because they're trying to put pressure on the employer. They're not doing it for a public service they're doing it to organize the union. That's their purpose, their goal. (But) that doesn't mean they're bad."

Regardless neither side appears willing to budge anytime soon.

"We will not be bullied into giving up our employees' right to vote," Paster added.

Source: School Transportation News, January 2006. All rights reserved.