Members of a Vermont school bus worker union working in Windham County are preparing to strike after contract talks with their employer stalled out.
Curtis Clough, president of Teamsters Local 597 union, said members are satisfied with the economic proposals currently on the table, and that the company and union could have agreed and ratified a contract. But the bus transportation company Travel Kuz is not “bargaining in good faith,” and wants to take away a longstanding contract provision ensuring workers can choose not to cross the picket line of fellow workers in other locations, Clough said.
For its part, a Travel Kuz official wrote in a statement Tuesday that the company agreed to the union’s economic requests, but that the union’s readiness to strike to maintain the right to “support distant labor actions” places the interests of the union above the local school community.
The dispute is the latest in a set of mounting conflicts between the union and Travel Kuz. The company locked out bus drivers and monitors with Vermont Teamsters Local 597 from the Brattleboro headquarters in August to prevent them from working, prompting the union to picket.
Travel Kuz — affiliated with private equity-backed company Beacon Mobility — brought in replacement workers for the start of the school year at Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, which serves 10 schools in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, Putney and Vernon.
The company accused the union workers of unlawful and unsafe picketing after the first day of school, but the union president denied the allegations and local police present did not report unlawful activity.
The labor dispute subsided when Travel Kuz ended the work stoppage on Sept. 2, and workers returned to the job and contract talks continued.
But now, the bargaining between Travel Kuz and the union has reached a tipping point yet again.
Scott Sheridan, Travel Kuz’s senior vice president of operations, wrote in the statement that the union’s contract demand and potential strike will “jeopardize the safety” of students and inhibit the company from providing reliable transportation for the Windham Southeast school community.
“Sadly, the Teamsters are still threatening to strike beginning Thursday, not over pay or benefits, but over a demand for contract language that would allow Brattleboro drivers and monitors to walk off the job if any other Teamster unit, anywhere in the country, initiates a strike,” Sheridan wrote.
Clough said Travel Kuz is engaging in “regressive bargaining” by attempting to remove a workers’ rights provision that the company agreed to in previous negotiations and had been present in the contract for around 15 years.
Travel Kuz’s proposal would require union members to work as replacement drivers and monitors at other company locations, Clough said. Additionally, the proposal would also ban Teamsters Local 597 members from observing picket lines in Vermont initiated by International Brotherhood of Teamsters workers from other states.
“The company’s proposal would give the company the right to force our drivers through their picket lines at their locations,” Clough said. “Our members have always had the right to observe those picket lines, and what that means is they would have the right to individually decide not to cross those lines.”
Travel Kuz is responsible for hiring certified drivers and ensuring safe conditions for students and the school community if the union strikes, Clough added.
For union members, it was a “non-starter” to remove an existing protection and be prevented from standing in solidarity with other workers, Clough said. The Teamsters Local 597 union has given the company until Wednesday to respond to workers’ concerns before implementing plans to strike, he said.
Windham Southeast Supervisory Union officials were not immediately available to respond to a request for comment.
