Local school bus drivers voted Thursday night to ratify a three-year contract with First Student Inc., which contracts with School District 2 to provide transportation for students.
The Teamsters Local 190, which represents the 82 drivers, recommended Wednesday that the drivers accept the offer. Thursday night, they voted 54-16 to ratify it after a federal mediator was called in to help contract talks, preventing a possible strike in the process.
“We go to work tomorrow and we go to work under this new three-year contract,” said Joe Dwyer, Local 190’s Treasurer/Secretary, after the vote. “Through the mediation process and the work everybody put in, we look forward to working with First Student and providing service to the (school) district.”
The contract calls for an immediate 2.5 percent wage increase retroactive to August of this year, followed by a 1 percent bump on April 1. On Aug. 1, the drivers will receive a raise of 3 percent or the cost of inflation, whichever is greater, and Aug. 1, 2011, they will receive another 3 percent or cost of inflation raise.
Under the old contract, drivers earn between $10.82 and $13.86 an hour.
The decision came after the union drivers received the proposed contract language, which included the wage increases and protections against inflation as well as changes to First Student’s ability to bring in nonunion “call-in” drivers to fill in on routes, Dwyer said.
He added that union members were happy with the contract, a sentiment SD2 Superintendent Jack Copps echoed.
“I’m pleased,” Copps said. “The bottom line is I’m pleased that we’ve finally reached a settlement and will continue bus service for the students.”
As late as last Friday, a strike seemed possible after the drivers voted the day before to give negotiators the power to call a strike if necessary. At that point, Copps was ready to notify parents that kids who normally ride the bus may have to find other modes of transportation.
Both sides agreed Friday to call in John T. (Ted) Handel, a mediator out of Helena with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. At a meeting Tuesday, Handel helped facilitate a mediation session in which he shuttled proposal information between First Student and Teamsters negotiators.
“It took us nine hours, a lot of give-and-take and a lot of discussion on how to get there,” Dwyer said of the mediation. “It wouldn’t have been done without the help of the federal mediator.”
The old three-year contract expired on July 1 and the last time a mediator had to be called in for bus driver contract talks was about six years ago. Both the union and SD2 officials expressed relief that the negotiations had ended.
“I’ve certainly experienced labor strikes, but I don’t know that we’ve reached quite this level of anxiety about whether or not the buses would run,” Copps said.
First Student is a private company based in Cincinnati that contracts to bus up to 4,000 students in the Billings area each day. Nationwide it provides bus service to about 1,500 school districts.
