Union school bus drivers at Portland Public Schools ratified a
new union contract Feb. 29, after more than two years of working
without a contract. The group of 85 workers drive buses for special
education students, and are represented by Amalgamated Transit Union
Local 757.
The new contract runs through June 30, 2010 and is retroactive to
Jan. 1, 2006. Drivers will get annual raises of 2.5 percent, including
retroactive pay back to last July, and a flat $625 for the 18 months
before that. Under the previous contract, driver pay started at
$12.69 and rose to $16.51 after 10 years.
The new contract also raises the district’s capped contribution
to health coverage by 6 percent a year starting Oct. 1. That’s
also when the new statewide school district employee health insurance
pool comes into being, so there may be some reduction in the cost
of coverage.
Under the new deal, the union agreed to give up employer-paid retiree
health coverage after 2014. Currently the district pays for it for
to five years or until the retiree is eligible for Medicare.
“[The new contract] was quite a bit better than the one we
turned down,” said Randy Shaw, a PPS driver and member of
the union’s Executive Board. “But a lot of the drivers
still wanted to turn it down,” Shaw said.
In the end, Shaw said, members voted to approve it by a two-to-one
margin, and almost every member in the unit voted.
