Editor’s note: This commentary is by Paul Fleckenstein, a member of the Committee to Support CCTA Drivers, a rider on CCTA buses, and a public transportation advocate. He lives in Burlington.
On March 10, northern Vermont bus drivers are set to go on strike after management stonewalled through months of negotiations. Chittenden County Transportation Authority (CCTA) drivers, Teamsters local 597, are in a long-term battle with management over extended and unsafe work schedules, the expansion of part-time drivers, and constant surveillance and harassment.
The attitude of company bosses towards the concerns raised by drivers about health and safety is that the drivers are there to drive, not run the company. And workers who do raise their voices are concerned about company response, where discipline measures have become little more than an intimidation tool. With a practice that would make the NSA and Walmart proud, supervisors pull tapes from random buses each day without cause in order to comb them for infractions that allow them to write up and discipline drivers.
A veteran driver nearing retirement says he is anxious every time he returns the bus at the end of his shift fearing disciplinary action. And he is not alone. Many drivers report a continual stream of arbitrary and disciplinary abuse from supervisors.
The company’s predatory management has drivers on knife-edge fearing for their jobs and their family’s livelihood. Their stories are heart wrenching — and infuriating. CCTA has a reputation in the industry as an especially hostile workplace, completely out of sync with its slick marketing image as public transportation provider.
Management is taking a line that will be familiar to besieged public sector workers elsewhere: scapegoating. CCTA advertises that driver pay is above average compared to the rest of northern New England, neglecting to mention that metro Burlington area living costs are among the highest in the region. It proclaims that it has no interest but providing a high quality workplace and safe and effective public transit. Everything it does toward its workers, however, shows the opposite.
In February, bus drivers voted overwhelmingly (53-4) to reject managements last best offer. There is something seriously wrong with how CCTA runs.
There will be two solidarity events this week. An early morning driver-community informational picket on Wednesday, and a Bus Drivers Speak Out public forum on Thursday evening.
CCTA’s schedule runs on split shifts that force drivers to work several hours in the morning and then again several hours in the evening, with about five hours of unpaid time in between. For drivers who live outside of Burlington, they are unable to go home and often choose to sleep in their cars to make sure they are reasonably well rested for their evening shift.
Managements demand to increase the time spread in the split shifts flies in the face of the professional experience of drivers, who know that their working conditions impact the public’s safety. During a press conference, Rob Slingerland, a bus driver, pointed out that the majority of accidents involving CCTA buses are a result of driver fatigue. Such a change is only allowable due to a flaw in Vermont state law exempting municipal drivers from national standards; however, the law is intended for firefighters responding to an emergency, not scheduled drivers.
But management, in line with speed-up imposed on workers in many industries, is not only trying to increase the length of the workday, it also wants to increase its intensity. CCTA is creating tighter route schedules and allowing fewer breaks for the drivers. This has reached the point where several drivers have reported urinating on themselves due to an inability to take a bathroom break.
Despite the fact that management has been consistently shorting full-time workers — then demanding cash back from employees to cover health care premium costs when their hours fall short — management is insisting on provisions for hiring more part-time workers. Like most part-time work, these jobs don’t come with any benefits and they will take 35 hours a week from the full-time drivers. Slingerland argues, “If we allow part-time workers in now, the company will expand the use of part-time labor next time around. This is about protecting a 40-hour work week.”
The anger and resolve of the drivers has roots in years of management dysfunction. Mike Walker was involved in intense negotiations with the company several years, when the drivers were just hours away from a strike. “Once the news crews left, they [management] went right back to same old business as usual. They fooled us once, they’re not going to fool us twice.”
After the months of insincere contract negotiations, topping a basic failure to abide by the last contract, management shows no recognition of drivers right to a union and collective bargaining. CCTA even wants its memos, for example, to override contract language on wages, hours, and working conditions. The drivers are not only fighting for their union’s ability to defend livable jobs, but also to defend a safe and environmentally responsible mass transit system.
Fortunately, the bus drivers are not alone. CCTA buses service students and low-income workers with no other means of transportation. Thus, the drivers’ issues are ones that resonate deeply in the community.
Drivers, riders, and Vermont residents are mobilizing for a solidarity campaign to fight for livable jobs and make sure that management’s attempts at intimidation don’t work.
As successful transit worker and public school teachers strikes have demonstrated, success rides on education and reaching out to the riders and workers who depend on the bus drivers — and who understand the importance of standing up for livable jobs.
We are all on this road together. CCTA drivers want to drive, but management is forcing the drivers to strike in order to defend their jobs and public safety. On March 10, when the drivers start walking the picket line, they won’t be alone. Plans are underway for rallies, public forums, and leafleting the bus riders — all to insist that the working conditions at CCTA must fundamentally change now.
There will be two solidarity events this week. An early morning driver-community informational picket on Wednesday (Facebook event) , and a Bus Drivers Speak Out public forum (Facebook event) on Thursday evening.
