By Mike Matejka
Going to school and getting on the school bus should not be a daily gamble. This is the challenge that Unit 5 faces with First Student, their private, for-profit school bus provider. There are too many horror stories of late or non-existent buses to repeat.
Perhaps we need to look back four to five years ago, and do a little comparison, reminding ourselves, you get what you pay for.
The starting salary at First Student is $14 per hour. There are no health benefits, there is a 401K, but it depends upon employee contributions, with First Student offering only $250 annually. There are six paid holidays, provided you show up the work day before and the day after the holiday. Although the Affordable Care Act requires companies to provide health insurance, First Student does not.
Now compare that package to what bus drivers had when they were Unit 5 employees. The pay was not that different, but there were 11 sick days, there was Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance, drivers were under the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund pension plan and they received longevity bonuses. And in all of this, I did not mention the bus monitors, who work with special needs students, who are paid even less.
Unit 5 cited these expenses, and legitimately, absenteeism problems, when they privatized the service. Oh, and by the way, Unit 5 bus drivers had organized a union and were attempting to negotiate a first contract with Unit 5 when the school buses were privatized. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board found Unit 5 guilty of bad faith bargaining, but that was over-turned in the Appellate Court. First Student drivers have since re-organized and are trying to bargain a contract with First Student now.
A solid work ethic means showing up every day and being ready to work. At the same time, safely driving a bus while maintaining discipline with a crowd of energetic youngsters is no easy task. The work comes on a split shift, meaning you have to be available in the morning and then work again in the afternoon. My father was a city bus driver in East St. Louis, so we grew up with a split shift life style – he was usually out the door by 5 or 5:30 a.m., and then did not appear again until 6 or 6:30 again in the evening. It worked because we had a two-parent household, not always common in today’s society.
We have an expectation of people working hard, but so many service jobs, whether in restaurants, nursing homes or driving the school bus, often barely pay a living wage. Without health insurance, people are often at risk. Unit 5 is right to expect its drivers to show up on time and do their job, at the same time, we have to remind ourselves, “you get what you pay for.” Better conditions can often be a great booster to a work ethic.
Mike Matejka is the Governmental Affairs director for the Great Plains Laborers District Council, covering 11,000 union Laborers in northern Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. He lives in Normal. He served on the Bloomington City Council for 18 years, is a past president of the McLean County Historical Society and Vice-President of the Illinois Labor History Society.
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