Deal includes more paid hours: Unifor
School bus drivers who work at Stock Transportation in the Toronto North Division and the Toronto East Division ratified a new three-year collective agreement on May 4.
“I am proud of the resolve of the bargaining committees, who negotiated a payment system that recognize all working time associated with performing the daily duties of a school bus driver,” said Debbie Montgomery, Unifor Local 4268 president. “Drivers will now be paid from the time they start working and until they finish each of the split shifts they do every morning and afternoon.”
Unifor represents more than 575 school bus drivers who provide services for Toronto District School Board, the Franco Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board. Driving a school bus is an all-day commitment with split shifts of work between 7 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., said the union.
The new agreement includes an 8.1 per cent increase to the base driving wage over three years and guarantees a minimum of four hours pay. More importantly, it means drivers will be paid for all hours worked, when their routes or duties extend beyond four hours, said Unifor.
The agreement will result in more paid hours for drivers. For example, a driver who had a route that had considerable travel time before or after the students were on and off the bus who was working 5.5 hours a day but only paid for four hours of route time will now be paid for the full 5.5 hours, said the union.
There were other functions of the job that also were not previously compensated, such as mandatory training or meetings that will now be paid for under the terms of this collective agreement, said Unifor.
“We believe properly compensating drivers for all their time will go a long way towards addressing a shortage of bus drivers in Ontario and we hope Stock Transportation will soon have regularly assigned professional drivers for all of their routes,” said Len Poirier, Unifor director of road transportation.
Unifor is Canada’s largest union in the private sector, representing 315,000 workers in every major area of the economy, including 2,900 school bus drivers.
