PAGE 12 |
April 6, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Portland Public Schools
bus drivers are speaking up
From Page 1
of $23.84 after 25 years.
“Are you saying that meatloaf,
hamburgers and hotdogs are
more valuable than our chil-
dren?” school bus driver Beth
Blumklotz asked school board
members at their March 20 meet-
ing — to cheers from parents
who had turned out to oppose a
planned relocation of a program
for disabled children. Blumklotz,
who delivers kids safely to James
John Elementary and Jackson
Middle School five days a week,
serves on the union negotiating
team.
“We’re not against our col-
leagues earning a livable wage.
We just want the same,” Blumk-
lotz told the Board. “We want
compensation that is commensu-
rate with the responsibility that
we shoulder every day transport-
ing our students.”
The school bus drivers who
are employed directly by the
district transport about 600 stu-
dents who have autism, mild
moderate or complete deaf or
blindness, learning disabilities,
mental retardation, physical im-
pairments, speech, language, or
mental impairments, or emo-
tional traumas. They make
slightly less than school bus
drivers who work for outside
contractor First Student trans-
porting the district’s general stu-
dent population, who are also
Local 757 members. The district
employees do get somewhat
better benefits however.
Most of the jobs are part-time:
30-hour weeks consisting of
weekday split shifts of three
hours each. Some drivers find
that those hours at current wages
aren’t enough to afford rent. One
driver who turned out to picket
March 23 said he’s currently
homeless.
The current union contract
provides for a starting wage of
$14.58, but the district couldn’t
find qualified drivers to work at
that wage, and increased it $1.67
an hour — to $16.25 — with the
union’s agreement. [That was
made easier by the fact that the
State of Oregon picks up 70 per-
cent of the tab for school district
transportation costs.]
At the March 23 bargaining
session, district representatives
made what they called their “last,
best, and final offer.” It would in-
crease starting pay to $17.96 in
July.
Blumklotz and other members
of the bargaining team say it
doesn’t go far enough; they want
parity with the food truck drivers.
They also object to a district
proposal that they say would
open the door to the use of non-
union drivers and less-skilled
less-compensated union drivers
to do substantially similar work
to that of regular union mem-
bers. The proposal has to do
with a new program of using
vans and cars to transport stu-
dents who because of behavioral
or discipline problems can’t
travel with other students. Local
757 signed an agreement about
the use of such drivers in Sep-
tember 2016 on the understand-
ing that it was only for part-time
positions and only to replace
much-more-expensive trips cur-
rently provided by taxi compa-
nies. But Blumkoltz says the
program hasn’t replaced taxi
rides, has instead started to can-
nibalize existing bus routes, and
has since grown to about 15 em-
ployees, often working more
than part-time hours, under a
new department manager. The
employees are members of the
union, but are stuck at the start-
ing wage and lack benefits, all
of which is unacceptable,
Blumkoltz said.
The two sides are planning to
meet again April 9 with the assis-
tance of a mediator to see if they
can move toward agreement.
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See school bus driver Beth Blumklotz make the case for a livable wage at the
March 20 meeting of the Portland Public Schools Board at https://bit.ly/2IfL8rO
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