Pay increases stalled for bus drivers

Santa Rosa County school bus drivers and monitors will be receiving no pay raise - as they had expected they would - when Durham Bus Services take over for this school year.

"Durham's representatives were attending meetings and talking to people telling them they had run the numbers and people could expect a nice raise when they took over in Santa Rosa County," said Mike Scott of Navarre, Senior Vice President for the union representing the drivers.

"In fact, there was talk about $13.50 an hour, up from the base pay of $10.50 an hour new hires get now. But I knew that was not going to happen, since these people doing the talking didn't know we had an extended contract with pay issues already outlined."

Scott, Senior VP for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1395, said when Durham representatives came to the first bargaining session with the local union representatives on May 20, Durham had a Xeroxed copy of the old contract, which was to expire July 31 this year, without the amendment - a Memorandum of Understanding negotiated with Laidlaw/First Student.

"Back in 2005, Laidlaw came to the union and asked for help," Scott said. "They were having problems hiring and keeping drivers, and the school board was putting pressure on them to keep a bench of substitute drivers. They wanted us to help them find new drivers and help keep everybody happy.

"So we negotiated some terms in a new memorandum of understanding, which is amendment to the current contract. The current contract was supposed to expire July 31, 2008. But with this amendment, Laidlaw wanted to extend the contract to July 31, 2009. And under that amendment, there is already a three-percent raise built in to start Sept. 1 this year for drivers, and Durham did not know that," Scott said.

"They were quite surprised, to say the least. And when they saw there was already supposed to be a slight raise in September this year, they immediately backed off the idea of giving a raise to new hires in July or August, because they would have to give an additional threepercent in September."