Privatized bus drivers vote to unionize Dorchester

Hurray for exercising one's federal rights to organize with one's co-workers into a union, and negotiate the terms of one's own life, livelihood and career path.

This is called taking control of one's own destiny, and Dorchester's bus drivers deserve recognition for their courage and tenacity.

It happened a week or more ago, but it's worth the attention still, as our lawmakers seem dead-set on privatizing the rest of South Carolina's school bus drivers -- a step that opens the door for even more privatized drivers to invite union representation.

Reporter Jim Tatum framed the situation in the Journal-Scene on April 13:

Bus drivers and monitors for Durham School Services, the private corporation that currently operates the Dorchester District 2 school bus services, will vote today on whether to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union.

Union organizers Annette Hill and Sabrina Isom, both bus drivers for Durham, say they believe most of their co-workers, some 160 strong, are ready to go union.

Fifty percent plus one of the employees must vote yes for the drivers to unionize, they said.

“I think we’ll get that and more,” Hill said. “People want to be treated with dignity on the job.”

Hill says she has been a bus driver for four years, first with the district, then with Durham when the company took over bus operations in July 2011. She says she believes the union can only be a good thing for the employees.

“I don’t see a downside at all,” she said. “We want to drive up the standards; we want job protection; we need a voice in the workplace. We want someone to have our back. I’m a single mother of three and I just can’t see myself coming in one day to tell my children I don’t have a job anymore.”

Organization efforts have been ongoing since the beginning of the year and feedback seems to be strongly pro union, they said.

“We really got on the ball the first of the year,” Isom said. “We’ve been working very hard to get the word out.”

Hill and Isom also said the company, for all its rhetoric of not hindering union activity, is actively campaigning against them.

“We’re seeing all this anti-union material around the office,” Hill said. “Everybody got a packet in the mail at home over the holiday. If they say they don’t oppose it, then why are they putting out all this anti-union material everywhere?”

Most Durham employees nationwide do not belong to unions, but the company does not oppose employees engaging in union activity, Dave Brabender, Durham School Services Regional Manager said.

“The company feels it is very important for employees to vote – and to vote how they honestly feel,” Brabender said. “The company would never hinder that.”

Nonetheless, Brabender noted that, while a union can make promises, it can’t actually deliver on them – that ultimately falls to the company. When Durham Dorchester District 2 contracted with DD2, the company hired the drivers at the same wages the district paid them, and gave them a pay increase, he said. They also have benefits through Durham as well, Brubender said.

Currently, drivers are paid $10.50 per hour for driving their regular assigned routes and are paid $9 an hour for driving any extracurricular activities, he said. The reason for that is because extracurricular activity driving is voluntary extra duty, not assigned responsibility.

Brubender also said that each contract is based on a separate set of circumstances and one must look at the entire picture rather than individual parts.

“There are a lot of things that play into it,” he said.

The Teamsters have a strong and growing presence in South Carolina, L.D. Fletcher, president of Local 509 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said. Thus far, the Teamsters have unionized Durham drivers in Beaufort and Charleston counties. Since that time, the union has successfully negotiated contracts to increase wages and bring added protection to workers who otherwise would not have a voice, Fletcher said.

Fletcher noted that the union does not solicit membership; workers who believe their employers are disparately treating them seek out the union.

DD2 officials say the district does not have an interest in whether the drivers unionize; that is an issue between Durham and its employees.

DD2 outsourced bus operations to Durham in July 2011. The current bus fleet is still owned and maintained by the state of South Carolina.

The contract runs year to year, in this case from July 1, 2011 until June 30, 2012, and calls for the district to pay Durham $136.19 per bus per day to operate the fleet. At the end of the contract year, the DD2 board of trustees can renegotiate with Durham or seek another provider.

If the Durham drivers join the Teamsters, then the District will have to recognize and negotiate with the union, Fletcher said. If thedistrict decides to contract with another bus service provider whose employees are union members, the district would have to recognize and work with that union as well, Fletcher noted.

“If they were to happen to choose a contractor that is not unionized, we’ll just start the organization process again,” he said.

The election will be held today at Durham offices on Boone Hill Road. Polls close at 5:30 p.m. and the results should be known shortly after, Hill said.

Tatum's colleague, reporter Judy Watts, delivered the update later that day:

Teamsters Local 509 is celebrating tonight after winning the vote to unionize Durham Bus Services workers who drive the buses for District 2 Schools.

The vote was 85 to 66, according to organizer Sebrina Isom.

“There were bus drivers and supporters there very happy and hugging each other. They were saying ‘ain’t no stopping us now,’” Isom said in a telephone interview at about 6:30 p.m. tonight.

“Some of them gave me a hug and said they really appreciated all the work I and the others had done to make this happen,” Isom said.

School bus drivers across South Carolina, take note: If the legislature follows through on its promise to privatize your jobs, which leaves you without state health and retirement benefits, this is your alternative. I recommend getting in touch with your co-workers Annette Hill and Sabrina Isom now, to begin preparing yourselves and your co-workers for the transition.

Pro-voucher columns sound strikingly similar

As I read this column by Rep. Christopher Murphy in the Summerville Journal Scene, I thought it sounded an awful lot like the one that Karen Floyd published in the Mount Pleasant Patch a few days ago. Both praise the House for passing its voucher bill last week.

O, I know there's no voucher-on-paper in the bill adopted by the House last week; it's just a shell game that uses public dollars to give tax breaks to people who send their children to private schools. But as former Rep. Lewis Vaughn hinted back in 2004, it's still just a voucher scheme that uses tax breaks to accomplish the goal.

The similarities between Murphy's and Floyd's columns are spooky, as if they are revising a common document to add their own local place names and flavor.

For example, both declare they are products of public schools.

Floyd: "I am the product of public education: from Irmo Elementary School to a Juris Doctorate from the University of South Carolina School of Law."

Murphy: "As a product of Dorchester District 2 (Summerville High School ’86), I share in that pride."

Both praise their own local public schools.

Floyd: "Likewise our identical twin sons have received excellent educations in public schools from Pine Street Elementary School to the Freshman Academy at Spartanburg High School. I can point to seminal teachers and coaches that have impacted their lives in positive ways, and we are forever grateful to each one."

Murphy: "The district - among state’s highest achieving - is one of the reasons our county continues to attract new residents.
...
In other words, parents in Dorchester 2 already have some of the widest “school choices” in the state. And that’s a big part of why the public schools here are exceptional."

Both, however, pivot from praising the public schools in their own communities to citing the example of tax breaks for private school tuition in Florida.

Floyd: "Over 35,000 low-income students in Florida are now enrolled in the school of their parents’ choice through such a program this school year. State budget officials there calculate the tax credits save $1.49 for each dollar in revenues 'lost' through credits."

Murphy: "These state income tax credits pose no threat to state funding for public schools. That’s because public schools are funded with sales tax revenues, not income tax collections. More to the point these programs, which already support tens of thousands of low-income students in other states, keep money flowing to the public schools even if children transfer out, since most of state spending on K-12 education is not 'tied' to the child. Recent studies have determined that each dollar in school choice tax credits claimed saves taxpayers $1.49 in spending."

Is it coincidental that both Floyd and Murphy are intimately familiar with the fiscal impact statements of Florida's private-school tax break program, and that they cite precisely the same data in their opinion-editorials?

Strikingly, both took precisely the same notes of Rep. Rita Allison's remarks during last week's House debate on vouchers.

Floyd: "Representative Rita Allison’s passionate defense of the bill on Wednesday was particularly insightful. She explained how the school choice debate is not a zero-sum argument about choosing public 'or' private schools; it’s really about 'and.' To reduce inequality, to increase parental engagement and to raise student achievement, Allison insists every parent in the state deserves to have real choices for their own child’s education. That means public and charter and private and magnet and virtual and home school; whatever works for the specifics of that pupil’s learning needs."

Murphy: "The school choice debate is not a zero-sum argument about choosing public 'or' private schools; it’s really about 'and.' To reduce inequality, to increase parental engagement and to raise student achievement, every parent in the state deserves to have real choices for their child’s education. That means public and charter and private and magnet and virtual and homeschool and frankly, whatever works for the specifics of that pupil’s learning needs."

Wow -- even the sentence fragments are noted and punctuated identically, word-for-word.

That's some amazing note-taking. Either Floyd and Murphy shared their notes of Allison's remarks with one another, or Allison was speaking from the same document that Floyd and Murphy later revised to draft their columns.

I wonder if there are -- or will be -- other column clones floating around our state on this topic?

When is public information not public?

Today, it's Summerville; tomorrow, South Carolina.

The Post & Courier reports that in Summerville, the rules about public information appear to be different from the rules elsewhere in the state and nation.

I reckon we can expect more of this bobbing and weaving as Governor Nikki Haley pushes for a statewide school bus privatization plan. As she seems to define transparency, we'll all have free and open access to absolutely nothing.

Three people who asked for a copy of the Durham School Services bus contract from Dorchester District 2 schools were told it would cost $150 — an apparent violation of the state Freedom of Information law.

The requests came over the last few weeks as Teamsters union representatives try to organize bus drivers in the district.

District officials say the fee quote is policy. One of the requesters said it was an attempt to withhold information.

A South Carolina Press Association official called the fee quote “smoke.”

Durham School Services Regional Manager Dave Brabender confirmed that “there’s an organizing event going on, and there will be a vote in a couple of weeks.”

Allyson Duke, the district’s chief financial officer, said the $150 fee was quoted for copying a 22-page document because that fee is called for under a district “commercial use” policy, and staff understood the contract was requested for the Teamsters.

One hundred fifty dollars to copy a 22-page document? That's $6.82 per page. I knew it was expensive to live in Summerville, but this seems a little exorbitant.

“No, no. There’s no specification for that in the law. District policy does not trump state law. I think there’s smoke there,” said Bill Rogers, S.C. Press Association executive director.

The requesters are state residents and are treated the same as anyone else under the law, he said. “Above all, financial contracts are open. They should be available at minimal cost,” Rogers said.

Two of the requesters were a bus driver in the district and a bus driver from another district who is a union representative. They were told they could view the contract without charge.

Asked to assist by the Teamsters, activist Rob Groce of Knightsville pushed the district on the fee, and the contract was copied for him for $5.

Groce said he was told at first that it would take two weeks to produce the copy.

Okay, they knocked the price down from $150 to five bucks, but then said it would take two weeks? This is a request for a photocopy; it wouldn't take two weeks to typeset the entire 22 pages by hand, letter by letter, and print it using an old Ben Franklin press.

Are there no high-speed photocopiers in all of Dorchester County?

It boggles the mind, how difficult it seems to be to get public information.

“We didn’t deny anybody. We do have to have policies in place” to compensate for employees’ time and protect taxpayers’ dollars, Duke said.

She said she would speak with the district’s attorney about whether the commercial use fee is proper.

“The fact that I had to go through such rigamarole to get information ... it’s my opinion she was deliberately trying to withhold information where my tax dollars go, and I don’t appreciate that,” Groce said.

Duke said that was not true.

The district outsourced its bus services to Durham at the beginning of the school year.

The contract copies were requested because of drivers’ concerns that they are paid less per hour to drive to extracurricular events than they are to drive routes, Groce said.