Teamsters urge bus drivers to join

A local union is courting more than 100 school bus drivers in Iowa City and is expected to ask the district to not renew its contract with busing company First Student Inc.

"This is a critical situation," said Jesse Case, a member of Teamsters Local 238 and national campaign coordinator for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. "We have drivers who are concerned with safety issues that are being ignored, and these drivers are not going to be ignored anymore.

"We're talking days not weeks to address these problems," Case added. "We're going to be asking parents to prepare for alternative transportation so these drivers can be heard."

Case said he and a group of drivers will attend today's Iowa City School Board meeting to ask the district to not renew its contract with First Student until the busing company recognizes its bus drivers and monitors as a collective bargaining unit. The Cincinnati-based First Student has had the contract for busing services in the school district in some form since 1986.

Iowa City School District superintendent Lane Plugge said the teamsters contacted his office a couple of weeks ago about unionization. First Student and the district agreed to a $3.07 million deal last June.

"Our official position is we have no preference whether the drivers for First Student are part of a formal organization or they're not," Plugge said Monday. "We look at this as an issue between the company First Student and the drivers who are trying to organize, and we would encourage them to follow the process that is set out."

Case said there are 116 bus drivers and monitors in the Iowa City School District and more than 80 percent of them signed representation cards in favor of joining the union. In order to organize, the teamsters must show that at least 30 percent of the bargaining unit would support the union, according to rules set out by the National Labor Relations Board.

From the time a petition is filed with the NLRB, an election would be scheduled to take place within six weeks. However, Case said the teamsters think First Student would not run a fair election and might fire drivers who try to unionize.

First Student labor relations director Tom Secrest called Case's claim "ridiculous."

"That's against the law, and if they had any evidence of that, I am sure they would tell you, and there would be no evidence of that because it doesn't happen," Secrest said of Case's firing claim. "Whatever the NLRB needs from us, we cooperate with the process."

Mike Johnson, vice president of First Student's regional office in St. Louis, said three out of 18 locations in his region are unionized. Johnson said he planned to attend tonight's school board meeting "mostly to observe and see where we go from here."

"We're not anti-union," Johnson said. "We just want the employees to be able to decide and what the teamsters are trying to do right now is force us to do this."