Click Here to Return to the Homepage ! We can't pay full time bills on part time incomes!
The typical Laidlaw Co. San Francisco school bus driver works just 6.68 hours per day. (In order to be able to successfully bid on an 8-hour route, a driver must have about 14 years of seniority.) There are only 182 working days during the regular school term. That produces an annual income of $23,221. For those fortunate enough to drive during the summer school sessions, the additional pay comes to only $2300.
It is hard to find a decent affordable place to live in San Francisco. A two bedroom apartment can easily cost more than $1000 per month. That takes more than half a typical driver's income. When you factor in the cost of food, clothing, transportation, insurance and other common expenses, it's hard to figure out how to raise a family on what's left. Yet many drivers are single women raising children on their own whose driving job is the sole source of their family income. And there are dispatchers and office personnel who are paid as little as $10.63/hour. Annual incomes for many are under $28,000 per year.
In a quest for cheaper housing, many workers who grew up in San Francisco have had to abandon their home town. Some commute from as far away as the Central Valley. They drive an hour-and-a-half or more to work, leaving home at 5:00 a.m. Most drivers work a split shift. They spend three-and a-half hours behind the wheel of their bus in San Francisco traffic during the morning commute. They then have to wait several hours until the afternoon shift when they drive their second three-and-a-half hours, returning children to their homes. Then they get back into their cars and commute another hour-and-a-half back home. That makes for a 15 hour day for less than 7 hours' pay. The unpaid break in mid-day is usually not long enough for them to get another part-time job. For many drivers, that means they must find a second job on weekends.
During the last contract, a large number of drivers suffered a cut in their paid hours as a result of changes in the schedules for kindergarten routes. All drivers lost hours because of newly instituted in-service days for teachers during which there are no classes. The average driver lost $3400 in income. Two senior drivers in the same household who had full shifts that were cut could have lost as much as $14,000 in family income.
Laidlaw can supplement driver hours by bringing in extra work -- field trips, medi-van services, and charter work. But management eliminated the position of the employee who used to handle that function and has failed to aggressively compete for those jobs. To add insult to injury, Laidlaw set up another transportation service less than two miles from the current bus yard and has channeled that type of work to this operation (Click Here). Employees of that operation have substandard wages and benefits, but also don't have the level of training and certification UTU members are required to have.
When negotiations opened, employees did not make extravagant demands. We asked management to help solve the problem of lost hours and income. We asked that we be paid enough to be able to raise our families -- to be able to live in the city where we work or within a reasonable commuting distance. We asked them to eliminate wage inequities for those earning widely different wages for comparable work. We asked for improvements in safety conditions at the yard, for an increase in our life insurance (which has not changed since the 1970s), and for realistic route schedules that allow for the common delays in city traffic. We asked that they honor our contract by shutting down the non-union operation that has taken work away from us, and focus instead on bringing in more work by restoring jobs they eliminated that would support that effort. We asked for respect. To date, management has yet to commit to solving these problems.
Laidlaw is the nation's largest transportation company. It operates 39,000 school buses and special education vehicles in over 1000 school districts. It also owns Greyhound, and operates municipal transportation systems, emergency healthcare services, medi-van services, and an environmental services/sanitation company. Last year it bought 15 more companies. Laidlaw revenues grew by 22%, while income rose 32%. Shareholder dividends jumped 30% and shareholder equity rose 11%.
In 1998, five top company executives shared nearly $3.7 million is executive compensation. Over the last three years, they divided up almost $11 million in salary, bonuses, stock options and other compensation, plus perks like interest-free home loans and two retirement plans.
Since 1993-94, Laidlaw's annual revenues from San Francisco rose on average 5.8% per year. During the same period, wage rates for Laidlaw drivers increased only 2.4% per year, but because of reduced hours, many of our incomes actually fell. The Laidlaw contract with the SF Unified School District is one of the company's most lucrative operations. It's last five years here have been Laidlaw's best ever. In no small measure, Laidlaw's success is made possible by the large number of experienced professional drivers and other personnel who work for it. Half the drivers have more than 8 years of service. We are stable, responsible, dedicated employees who care for and about the children of San Francisco. Each year we donate hundreds of hours of our labor as drivers, tutors, and coaches to benefit the children and the community of San Francisco.
We transport San Francisco's most precious possession, it's children, yet earn less than many in The City who haul garbage or deliver freight. Our families' needs ought to come before Laidlaw greed.
Issued by UTU Local 1741.