By Ben Joravsky
“We’re carting some very important cargo with these children, and yet with the money they pay us a lot of drivers live on the edge of poverty,” says Shirley Jones, a veteran driver for the Robinson Bus Service. “It’s time the industry changes its attitude toward drivers.”
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In 1979, drivers at Robinson, one of the largest companies in the system, voted against unionizing. Four years later they voted for the union, but the company appealed, arguing that some of the voters were ineligible. “In 1988 we won the appeals, but they had outlasted us,” says Jones. “The union that was representing us had all but forgotten us. We didn’t have many original drivers left. We were right where we started.”
Jones’s longevity is unusual in a field where few drivers last for more than five years. “I started way back when in 1979,” she says. “My twins had just turned four and I was ready to go back to work.”
The board’s bus operations are overseen by a school board employee named Tim Martin, who did not respond for comment. In the past, school officials have expressed sympathy for the drivers while insisting there’s no money to be spared for benefits or higher wages. They estimate it would cost about $1.8 million to provide health benefits for drivers–much more than the schools could afford. After all, the argument goes, the system is for educating children, not providing adults with decent jobs.
“That’s why it’s so important to have a code of conduct all companies must subscribe to–so no one is at a disadvantage for doing what’s right,” says Jones. “But I think a lot of these companies aren’t being serious about protecting their employees. I think they’re waiting for the job market to change–for unemployment to go up and the next wave of out-of-work truck drivers to sweep in. You have to ask yourself if that’s a good attitude for the system to have. Do you want to have to depend on bad times to hire people cheap to transport your kids? I think the job’s more important than that.” o
