I’m a school bus driver and every year our boss has to remind us not to use our smartphones while driving the goddamn things. Because every year some of our drivers still do it. Last year one of them actually rear-ended a stopped car at 45 mph while on her phone and somehow still has her job.
Doesn’t that have more to do with how hard it is to hire bus drivers?
Yeah, that plus our union makes it very hard to fire people, even for gross illegality. Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% pro-union (we make about $10 more per hour than our neighboring non-union districts and have health insurance and a pension) but there’s definitely a downside to it. Our shop steward got a DUI after blowing a fucking .36 (she was found passed out in her car with the engine running) and was driving her route three hours later, and she was eventually allowed to resign rather than being fired. Shop stewards are even more protected than regular union members.
Where I come from, they wouldn’t fire a bus driver who showed up at work in the morning smelling like booze, just tell him to go sleep it off. It’s a shit job, nobody wants to do it. I do live in a wholly different country though, so bus drivers are paid shit despite being unionized as even with subsidies the bus routes in small towns aren’t very profitable. Cities with people in them are a different story.
This is for regular bus routes, not school buses, we don’t have those, schoolkids just take the same bus as everyone else.
I’m a school bus driver and every year our boss has to remind us not to use our smartphones while driving the goddamn things. Because every year some of our drivers still do it. Last year one of them actually rear-ended a stopped car at 45 mph while on her phone and somehow still has her job.
Doesn’t that have more to do with how hard it is to hire bus drivers?
Our county can’t find anyone. We just have empty bus routes.
(Yes I’m aware it is 100% money)
Yeah, that plus our union makes it very hard to fire people, even for gross illegality. Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% pro-union (we make about $10 more per hour than our neighboring non-union districts and have health insurance and a pension) but there’s definitely a downside to it. Our shop steward got a DUI after blowing a fucking .36 (she was found passed out in her car with the engine running) and was driving her route three hours later, and she was eventually allowed to resign rather than being fired. Shop stewards are even more protected than regular union members.
Where I come from, they wouldn’t fire a bus driver who showed up at work in the morning smelling like booze, just tell him to go sleep it off. It’s a shit job, nobody wants to do it. I do live in a wholly different country though, so bus drivers are paid shit despite being unionized as even with subsidies the bus routes in small towns aren’t very profitable. Cities with people in them are a different story.
This is for regular bus routes, not school buses, we don’t have those, schoolkids just take the same bus as everyone else.