I apologize if this doesn’t belong here, I normally just lurk here. Also it’s a bit long.
For context: I (24F) am a bus assistant. To put it simply I monitor disabled children, mostly toddlers, on school bus going to and from school. My hours are broken up into sections or “routes” and depending on how many kids you have on your list, how far each kid is from each other and whether or not you have a lunch route or “Midday”, you could get as little as 5 and upwards of 7 hours a day. It’s the kind of job where every minute of hour truly counts. More so than most other jobs.
I’ve been at this job for 2 years now. Starting out, it was ok I guess. Decent hours and decent pay. I covered a bad route or two, some coworkers or parents
weren’t the greatest but nothing noteworthy.
Awhile back, we were told that we were going to merge with another company who we’ll call “Brighter Movement”. Ok, that’s fine. We were we might get some new rules, maybe a few minor changes and some new players but nothing that would greatly affect us peasant drivers and BAs, cool.
They lied to us. We weren’t merging, Brighter Movement bought us out. And there weren’t going to be a few changes, they were taking everything over. It’s like everything was a tower that this company is set on knocking over, in escalating fashion.
First we’re the refresher courses, basically brushing up on the basics. These are mandated my state law. Normally, we get about 2 each school year but now, we’re having to do 4 to 5 of these classes every year. Annoying, yes. Detrimental, not really.
Then came the pay roll system. They swap the entire system, and “tested it” by giving everybody 1 cent that would come in at random. I guess somebody didn’t check it properly because a week later, the majority of the system took a massive shit resulting in people either being grossly underpaid or not being paid AT ALL(me). The payroll guy at our yard was literally swarmed with dozens of pissed off people wanting their checks, honestly I felt sorry for the guy since it wasn’t his fault. We got both checks the next week, but we were all well irritated.
Than the cameras. All school buses in our county come equipped with about 8 audio enabled cameras, but this camera is special in the worst ways. First, it’s bolted to the top of the windshield. Not only does it partially impair the driver’s view, but the maintenance crew ended cracking a few windshields just trying to put these things in. They begged to put them somewhere else just for Brighter movement to give them a firm “No”.
This camera is hard wired into the buses computer and tracks your driving to the letter. It talks and every time it talks, a report is sent to general and safety managers of the yard. You didn’t stop at an exact point at the stop sign? Report. You were a bit too close to the car in front you? Report. You hit the brakes too hard because some asshat in a muscle car cut you off? Accident report. You’re covering a route and used your phone for directions to pick up your next kid because the written directions are basically illegible? Report and a recording. Going slightly over or slightly under the speed limit? Report. I hear this thing go off at least six separate times during just the morning run, no matter how careful my driver is. Drivers are raking up dozen of infractions for the tiniest thing, after years of having stellar driving records. They’re being micromanaged by a computer.
And finally, the new clock in system. Brighter movement also hard wired Samsung tablets into the buses for us to clock in with. We are promised 5 hours a day as long as we come in to work, as sometimes a kid could not come to school or something could happen on the road that affect our time. Our times were determined by “route sheets”. To put it simply, we wrote out the time we left the yard, picked up each kid, made it to the school and back to the yard. Dispatch double checked it with dry runs and gps and that’s how we got paid. These tablets toss that policy out the window, as everything with these devices is being tracked in real time.
Say 2 pick ups called out for that week, letting you leave the yard like 20 minutes later and come back 20 minutes earlier than normal. Before, you’d be paid the same regardless. Change in circumstances? Not your fault, you got paid. Now that you have to clock in before leaving the yard, you lose that 20 minutes of pay because the bus has to move at least a few minutes you clock in. Again, this is a job where every minute counts and they know this. 40 minutes a day out of a 5 hour route in a high tax state, can be good sized blow to your check that you can’t account for.
Nobody is happy about these changes, and are complaining and quitting in packs. Our union rep is swamped with calls from BAs and drivers. We’re having our time unfairly cut while they spend extra money upgrading things that didn’t need to be and fixing everything they break along the way.
HQ isn’t happy about these changes, I don’t the legality of it all but it’s led them to file a class action lawsuit against Brighter movement. I haven’t the slightest clue where this gonna go, but I’m damn sure not sticking around to find out. I’m trying to wiggle my way out of the working world for good, especially after this mess.
TDLR; my bus company lied to us, was bought out and new changes were added that do way more harm than good. Along with pissing almost everybody off, these changes sparked a class action lawsuit against the company that bought ours out. I’m not sticking around for the aftermath.