School Bus Blues

Privatized transportation doesn’t deliver on promises. Studies reveal flaws — costs increase — drivers demand respect.

By Clyde Weiss

As a parent, you want the best for your kids: the best opportunities, the best medical attention, the best schools. You proudly send them out the door each morning to catch their school bus, thinking everything is great.

You could be very wrong.

Many school bus drivers work for companies forced by competition to submit the lowest bid to win their contracts. Consequently, their employees are poorly paid and overworked, and they consider themselves lucky if they can get health insurance.

Because there’s also a chronic bus driver shortage, companies have lowered standards to attract workers. Some have lowered them too far. In Connecticut, for instance, nearly two-thirds of the school bus drivers who had been convicted of crimes were employed by private companies, according to a list the state gave to The New York Times. Two of the firms — Laidlaw Transit Inc. and Dattco Bus Company — employed most of them. Their crimes included narcotics possession and illegal weapons possession.

BIG BUSINESS. Each day, more than 440,000 drivers — employed by school districts or contractors — deliver more than 23 million students to school. Private bus firms such as Laidlaw, a Canadian-based company that is the largest school bus operator in America, serve nearly 7 million of those riders. Laidlaw buses alone transport 2.3 million students daily.

Questions of safety automatically arise when talking about private school bus operators. A 1999 report on the privatization of school bus services in Michigan noted that: "Private contractors have been beset by safety problems, many of which emanate from a lack of experience and from employing people at the low end of the wage scale."

Independent corroboration of such problems can be found in a surprise inspection of the Chicago Public School District’s privately operated bus fleet in November 1999. The Chicago Tribune reported that a number of safety problems were observed during the inspections, including buses operating without two-way radios and drivers without valid commercial drivers licenses. Inspectors also discovered that 55 drivers at 70 schools failed to walk through their buses, as required, to ensure all the students had actually left them!

Because of the difficulty of recruiting and retaining drivers, private contractors surveyed by the industry trade publication School Bus Fleet reported a "disruption of office and maintenance work." A majority of respondents also said they are regularly forced to use office staff and mechanics to cover their routes — not a prescription for safety.

If they’re lucky, students ride with better-motivated and well-compensated drivers who belong to unions such as AFSCME, which represents 120,000 school board and school bus company employees nationwide. (Some of those union members are employed directly by their school district; others work for private firms but are represented by the union.)

Many other drivers, however, have no one to represent their interests or to fight on their behalf to improve the quality of their lives and the conditions of their employment. Sometimes, when those employees try to stand up for their legal right to join unions, they are beaten down by their employer through scare tactics.

SEEKING RESPECT. In Maryland, Laidlaw employees who transport thousands of children daily in the city of Baltimore, and Baltimore and Howard counties, know all too well about such tactics. When they attempted to unionize four years ago, company officials "started having employee meetings every day for two or three weeks," says Bettie Brandt, a 55-year-old driver who ferries children as well as adults with physical or mental disabilities. "They said that if we voted the union in, we wouldn’t have a job. I guess they really got to the drivers. They were afraid of losing their jobs."

After Laidlaw failed to follow through with a promised medical package and continued treating the workers poorly, the company’s drivers again sought union representation. "We were really underpaid," Brandt says. "We were not getting the credit we deserve."

In fact, the employees were among the lowest-paid school bus drivers in the area. In addition, Laidlaw contributed little or none of the workers’ health insurance premiums. But compensation was not the only problem. Favoritism, arbitrary management and retaliation also led to high turnover.

In December, nearly 130 Laidlaw drivers and attendants overcame employer opposition and voted for representation by AFSCME Council 67. "No working situation is perfect, but the things we were asking for are very minimal," says driver William Harris, 32. "They’re things any person who has any amount of self-respect on the job would normally get. How is it that I’m being given responsibility [for children’s safety] and yet I’m not thought enough of to say, ‘This driver might get sick one day — he needs some paid sick time’?"

Now that they belong to AFSCME, the drivers are optimistic about the future. "We hope it will give us the opportunity to go to our company as equals," says Harris. "We want to be looked at as valuable employees."

WHAT SAVINGS? The primary motivation of school districts to use private bus contractors is cost efficiency, says Mark Cassell, an assistant professor in the political science department at Kent State University. In a recent AFSCME-commissioned study, "Taking Them for a Ride: An Assessment of the Privatization of School Transportation in Ohio’s Public School Districts," he notes that the urge to privatize is strongest "where school boards are sensitive to pressure to get more bang for the taxpayer buck."

The industry has its own perspective. "Usually, the ultimate decision [to privatize] is based upon either an attempt to control costs, improve the operation or a combination of both," Laidlaw says on its Web site. The company, like others in the industry, claims it can help school districts solve these problems. Reality often proves otherwise.

In Chicago, for instance, the cost of school bus operations increased during the course of a three-year contract with Vancom/Transpar Management Services — "in spite of Transpar’s commitment to reducing them," according to a June 2000 report by the Chicago board of education’s inspector general.

The per-pupil cost of transportation rose 13 percent in Chicago during the contract term "despite factors that should have resulted in a decrease," the report states. Among those elements were a decline in the number of children transported — resulting in a need for fewer buses — and a decrease in the number of special-education students who required rides.

Why was Chicago’s experience so bad? Among the reasons cited by the inspector general: "Chicago Public Schools has not held Transpar accountable for achieving the goals in its contract."

The study of contracted bus services in Michigan also found that results fell short of promises. It noted, for instance, that 10 bids received by the school district in the rural village of Pinckney "suggested that privatization would save from 18 percent to 20 percent of transportation costs annually. ... Unfortunately, when the district finally did privatize in 1995-96, the savings did not materialize."

Instead, the district spent 27 percent more for transportation services than it had two years earlier, when the bus system was run in-house. Hidden costs were part of the explanation. "Under the private operation in Pinckney, the district — not the contractor — is still responsible for maintaining a bus garage, liability insurance, all gasoline expenses, field trip expenses and athletic bus expenses," the report said.

Still, privatization of bus services has not spread far in Michigan. Edward McNeil, special assistant to the president of Michigan Council 25, notes that the union keeps a vigilant eye on school board members across the state "to make sure they have the best interests of the children in mind. That’s critical" to keeping out the profiteers.

MIGHTY FINE ‘RIDE’. Public awareness of the shortfalls of privatized school-transportation services is a major goal of AFSCME’s largest school affiliate, the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE)/AFSCME Local 4.

Last May, says Joe Rugola, executive director of OAPSE (and an International vice president), the union conducted workshops on school bus privatization for 50 activists from locals throughout the state who had already dealt with privatization threats or felt there was a "reasonable prospect that privatization might rise in the future." In addition, the union has used the Cassell report, Taking Them for a Ride, to spread the word.

"The study found no evidence that contracting districts operate at a lower cost per pupil," Cassell wrote. "In fact, reports filed with the state show that during each of the five years examined, the median per-pupil costs in districts relying exclusively on contracting was significantly higher than the median per-pupil costs for districts that provide services in-house."

Why, asks Cassell, is it more costly to contract out, despite industry claims to the contrary? "The most straightforward explanation," he concludes, "is that vendors charge more than what it costs districts to run their own service." In effect, he says, school districts "pay a premium to contractors" for the administrative freedom to focus on instructional services instead of transportation.

"We knew that privatization was not a cost-saving step — that it is, in fact, an ideological decision," says Rugola. "It has nothing to do with saving money. It’s important that there’s finally a study in Ohio that examines this question in a meaningful way, based on empirical data."

THE PUBLIC REACTS. The message is getting out that privatization is a bad idea. Voters in Martin County, Fla., tossed out school board chairman Tony George in last September’s primary, and his support for school bus privatization had a lot to do with it, says Jeff Schooly, then director of the Martin County Democratic Party.

Laidlaw took over management of that county’s bus system in 1999. Drivers who had more than four years’ tenure remained school district employees, represented by AFSCME. The rest became Laidlaw employees.

George, running for a third term in a nonpartisan race, "made privatization of buses a big issue of his campaign," says Schooly. The union, then in contract talks, didn’t make an issue of contracted services during the campaign, according to Local 597 Pres. Lisa Edwards. It didn’t have to: Democratic voters, who according to media reports mostly opposed privatization, turned out in large numbers in the overwhelmingly Republican county and bounced the eight-year incumbent out of office.

LAW ON OUR SIDE. In Ohio, when politics failed to keep bus services in-house, OAPSE didn’t throw in the towel. Instead, the union took the issue to court.

In 1999, the Lebanon City School District awarded a five-year contract to Laidlaw to run its transportation department. The drivers, district employees represented by OAPSE Local 511, were laid off. Laidlaw rehired many and began planning for a non-unionized future. But the company didn’t count on OAPSE’s tenacity.

OAPSE’s contract with the school district included a recognition clause stating that the union is the exclusive bargaining agent for its members. The district had violated that clause by conducting meetings with employees concerning their intent to contract with Laidlaw.

"They had three separate meetings with drivers on school property," says Jim Melle, general counsel for OAPSE. "They had direct dealings with employees to convince them" to join the company, which didn’t have enough of its own drivers to perform the service.

The union took the case to the State Employment Relations Board, insisting that the employer could only legally talk to the union — the recognized bargaining agent — about the terms and conditions of employment. By going directly to the drivers, however, the school district had bypassed that requirement. The board found probable cause. A hearing was set.

"We had them dead to rights on almost every aspect of this case," says Melle. "They saw the handwriting on the wall, and rather than get hammered at the Employment Relations Board, they agreed to a settlement, which included a provision that they would cancel their contract with Laidlaw."

The school board also agreed to pay OAPSE $35,000 for lost wages, lost union dues and other fees, and to admit to committing an unfair labor practice by hiring Laidlaw in the first place.

Why did the school board ignore the contract language? "It was a power play," says Melle. "The typical strategy [of the employer] is to say, ‘We’re going to do it. You call us on it, we’ll fight it out. If we lose, we don’t have much at risk since we’re playing with taxpayers’ money.’"

Meanwhile, in the first labor dispute of its kind to reach the Ohio Supreme Court, a majority of justices sided with OAPSE last June and declared that the Batavia School Board violated its collective bargaining agreement by laying off 13 bus drivers and a mechanic in July 1998, then signing a five-year contract with Laidlaw.

The union filed a lawsuit alleging the board had violated their statutory and contractual rights by privatizing their jobs. The union’s contract language is explicit, says Clyde Mauk, OAPSE’s southwest regional director. "Our recognition clause says that OAPSE is the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for the union," and that any attempt to get around that restriction is prohibited. The high court agreed.

THE FIGHT CONTINUES. The effort to privatize will continue as long as there is a financial incentive for the contractors, and some politicians believe it’s in the best interest of the taxpayers — even though, in the long run, costs for school bus services increase. "There’s no doubt about it," says Larry Spivack, regional director of Illinois Council 31, "the trend to privatize bus services has paralleled the national trend of public employers selling off their capital investments."

"This is going to be a continual battle for us," declares OAPSE’s Rugola. "There’s a great deal of money out there in public education for contractors to get their hands on." Besides, school bus transportation "is too lucrative a plum for private contractors to simply turn and walk away just because they’ve been defeated politically [and judicially] in a few places."