Teamsters Seek To Unionize More Tech Shuttle Bus Drivers In Silicon Valley

An anonymous reader writes with news about the effort to unionize shuttle drivers in Silicon Valley. "Shuttle bus drivers for five prominent tech companies will decide whether to unionize on Friday in a vote that has the potential to dramatically expand organized labor's territory in Silicon Valley and embolden others in the tech industry's burgeoning class of service workers to demand better working conditions. Drivers who ferry Yahoo, Apple, Genentech, eBay and Zynga workers -- all employed by contractor Compass Transportation -- will decide whether to join the Teamsters union in an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Union leaders say they want to bring the drivers into the fold so they can negotiate better pay and benefits -- as well as relief from a split shift that has the drivers working morning and evening shifts with no pay in between. A contract the Teamsters struck over the weekend for Facebook's shuttle bus drivers, who work for Loop Transportation, offers a glimpse of what may be possible: paid sick and vacation time, full health care coverage and wages of up to $27.50 an hour."

Comments

Re:Sick

[geoskd]

If I had mod points, I'd have modded you up.

I grew up as the only conservative in a family of upper middle class liberals. It always infuriated me that poor people were constantly getting free stuff, and I bought in to the whole poor people are lazy mentality. Once I graduated, I found myself working in a company that employs a great deal of the bottom of society. (I started there myself thanks to the collapse in '01). I was lucky enough to have a good family watching out for me, and I didn't stay on the bottom long, but I've been there. As a result of my experiences, I have moved much farther left on the spectrum, but I will note a few things here that need to be said.

First, I find far more lazy people in the middle classes than on the bottom or the top. Those on the top work hard because they are driven (this is what gets them to the top). Those on the bottom work hard because they have to in order to survive. They often have no hope, and no future because we have built the system in this country to virtually guarantee their continued failure. Those in the middle have the breathing room to be lazy, and some of them are. Unions historically protect all of their employees equally, which is mostly taken advantage of by the lazy members (definitely not the majority of union members, but a noticeable minority). It is this enabling power of unions that pisses people off about them. Unions need to stop protecting lazy workers. This is critical to their continued support from the rest of society. Unions have to take steps to ensure that their lazy members are compensated equitably to the effort they put in. A stupid lazy union member should not get paid the same as a motivated intelligent union member when all other factors are equal. That trait of unions is pretty much the only real reason anyone is opposed to unions in the first place. All other reasons are essentially window dressing around the real issue.

We need to stop giving money to the poor. They don't need money. What they need is a systematic, comprehensive, plan for how to get them off the bottom. The single biggest factor keeping poor people poor, is the responsibility for children. As noted, often times, a parent finds themselves as the sole caregiver for children, and they are consequently trapped, as the responsibilities of childrearing often conflict with the responsibilities that employers would place upon employees (such as reliable attendance, and schedule flexibility). The simplest solution to the problem would be to do away with welfare and unemployment benefits entirely and replace them with guaranteed services for their dependents such as 50 hours of weekly daycare, Free medical services for dependents, Three daily meals for dependents. All of those services combined would be cheaper than welfare and would provide far more benefit to society. Individuals, when freed from many of the responsibilities of dependent care, would be far more able to work the kinds of schedules that employers want/need. Being only financially responsible for themselves would allow them to choose better paths for their own career advancement (including continuing education), that would otherwise be impossible to manage while being primary caregiver.

Mind you I am not proposing making these options available only to the poor, I am proposing that society provide that level of service for all its citizens as a way to level the playing field for all parties. In the end, it will only help the next generation, when they don't have to grow up seeing their parent(s) trapped in poverty with no hope of escape, and no obvious way that the children can avoid the same fate.