If tomorrow your employer chooses to take every single one of those benefits away from you, what are you going to do about it?
Thanks, Frank. It’s good to know there are folks in the Denver area who are informed about how transportation works in this city. 
I used to frequently run fries over Lookout Pass in MT and Donner Pass in CA in a semi. In the winter. During storms.
I would have loved to have the guaranteed wage you had for my time. I was paid on the load, not the time spent getting it there. I wasn’t paid for the time putting the chains on, the time spent having the HP checking the chains, the time spent being slowed by people that sped down the slope at 60 Mph only to crash and hold me up waiting for the ambulance and tow trucks to show up.
The time spent having a log book scrutinized, 2 hour level 1 inspections with the express purpose of finding something wrong, per quota, that holds you up for a few hours until fixed. Plus the repair cost, of course.
All so we can get back on the road under deadline to deal with douchebags like you, whether making more than us per hour driving a bus, or in your four wheeler driving to the picket line.
You have no idea what it is to be a driver. Don’t insult those that understand the stress of driving commercially with your 2 month’s experience driving a fucking bus.
And how many passengers did you carry per trip?
For many years, I took the 25X, and then either the 66 or the 27, depending on where I was going. The 27 was contracted to Laidlaw or someone, the other two were RTD. The union drivers were far more competent and far more polite.
I’d like to do away with the privatization of routes. However, in exchange, I’d want safeguards against a strike, with it being an absolutely last resort, which I’m not sure it was in this case.
Your union management has a lot to answer for, I think. They played for arbitration, and when that failed, they were not prepared to do hard and honest bargaining.
So your problem with this union is, apparently, that it is not strong enough??
Well, I can tell you what I won’t do. I won’t picket.
Another thing I won’t do is bitch about how they fired me in a way that would have never happened if we were unionized.
Now, for everyone asking me to focus, let me ask the same. Pay attention.
This union (it doesn’t matter who’s driving the busses today) is the entitiy that allowed for members to be forced to go 6 months without a single day off.
Let me ask again. Maybe you, Frank, can answer this as nobody else is willing to.
Why did the union allow this to happen for so long? I know if everyone in my non-union office were forced to go 180 days without a break, there wouldn’t be anyone working there. If we were unionized, there is no way in hell we would work 180 days straight and still defend the union that allowed it.
So maybe I just don’t understand the unions. This is your chance to enlighten me. Again, I’ll ask the question nobody wants to answer.
Why is this union you’re so quick to defend excused from forcing people to work 180 straight days and then come along and claim they’re looking out for the workers?
I know it’s because the union leaders are in it for a paycheck and don’t give a shit about the workers. I’m just wondering what your explanation is.
What has this 6-month-straight-forced-servitude union done to deserve the trust that they’re looking out for Large Marge?
It wasn’t Soylent Green. But there were plenty of passengers in the cars, RV’s, motorcycles, campers, vans, and, um, busses I had to negotiate.
What you don’t understand, sadly, is that commercial vehicle safety isn’t only about the people on board. It’s about everyone on the road. A bus can be as deadly to a person as a semi, car or scooter.
And if you’re so insular that the people on the bus are the only ones you think deserve to merit your thoughts of safety, it’s probably best you’re not behind the wheel.
Now go to the picket line, and stay the hell off the road.
Not strong enough for the defense the OP is offering. 6 months without a day off? Given those working conditions even I would vote to unionize. Oh, wait.
I can’t answer that, duffer, I don’t know the answer. This is the first I’ve heard of it. In my opinion though, if I were a member of the RTD union, I would expect my union management to do something about it or heads would roll.
My entire point in this was that it got that far with the union leadership. Denver could have 18 different entities running the busses. I’m talking about the union the OP mentioned. I’m wondering why it got so bad when months ago the union workers were putting up with such hellish circumstances.
To me? Couldn’t care less if the busses run in Denver. Doesn’t affect me. Same as the flooding here doesn’t affect anyone else here. I was hoping for a reason it got so bad in the first place. That’s all.
(Of course, I’m not asking you for an answer to it. Just responding.)
Short of a wildcat strike, what would you have had them do? If such action was apparently allowed by their contract, then yes, they negotiated a bad one originally. It happens, but it’s hardly an indictment of unions in general, as you seem to be aiming your tirades. That’s what the new bargaining, and subsequent strike, is about, one supposes. After all, the OP was originally pitting people who voted to strike, but didn’t have the courage of their convictions to stand on the picket line. Whether the union is good or not, if you vote to strike, you should get your ass out there.
Apparently, our union president is fairly new to the position (a year, I think), but she came up from vice president, I believe, so she had some experience.
I think the doubt that was created after the bid for arbitration failed in January is part of what created such a split in the vote. Some drivers felt as you did: That the union wasn’t working hard enough at the bargaining table.
Trust is a huge issue with many of the drivers now, and I’ve heard plenty say that they don’t feel that the union is truly representing what is best for them. I personally do not have enough experience with the union to have a rock-solid opinion, but I felt that when they said the last contract was all RTD was going to give up, I believed them.
I do believe they argued hard (and honestly) for us in both the first and second contract offer. I didn’t think it was what drivers deserved, but I was willing to accept it to be able to keep on working. I think the drivers who’ve been there 10 years or more are bitter and angry, and they made the voices be heard. They fear that if RTD doesn’t increase the pay to keep new drivers, they will see more and more of their free time lost as more and more work mandates are given. Guys with 10 years of experience are being mandated to work on their days off. That typically falls to brand-new drivers. They see the problem getting worse, not better, and I think they feel they’ve waited long enough hoping for a turnaround (increase in new hires, which would reduce the work-load).
I don’t understand why the Department of Labor to didn’t initially deny the right to strike to spark independent arbitration. Perhaps it thought it wouldn’t go this far. I also think the frustration of the drivers was grossly underestimated by both sides, in part because while many will piss and moan, few will call the union and make their wishes known.
But what I think is irrelevant. It won’t change the direction this is headed now. I just wonder how long it will last, and whether I can wait it out.
Thanks for noticing the OP. 
A few of you have turned this into a rant about unions, which is not how this thread began.
Duffer, perhaps you’d like to start your own thread about how much unions suck?
Wow, truckers have to be careful of other drivers on the road? :eek: Get the fuck outa here!
As bus drivers, we have to contend with all the outside traffic you do, AND the passengers we are transporting. Sometimes on snowy, ice-covered roads.
I don’t indict unions in general. I just try to point out the fallacy that they’re infallible in protecting workers. It was useful 80 years ago, today not so much. It offers up a bounty of scorn.
There is no supposing. The OP mentions people that don’t show up to picket in support of the present contract “negotiation” as some sort of traitors to the cause, even though she is a newcomer to the fight for rights. Or whatever tired catchphrase they’re indoctrinating the newbies with. Meanwhile, non-union members are driving busses with the same skill she has learned in 2 months of paying dues. And somehow, non-union members aren’t as good at it.
I watched with glee the news reports today for massive death and carnage on the streetss of Denver. I was looking for fires, pile-ups, kittens burning. Alas, none were found. At least none caused by the non-union drivers. I was disappointed. What a waste of a hard-on and a pound of ground pork products. Maybe the weekend will improve things, but I digress.
The contract in force for at least the last 6 months (according to the OP) is valid. No time off at all. 6 months’ straight on the job. That’s the contract. If it wasn’t, well the union leadership would have stepped in before now, right? Right? The strike would have been done before this surely.
If it wasn’t in the contract they negotiated in the last round, the union bosses have some 'splaining to do. They have some members that have been paying dues to them while getting royally fucked. 6 months without a day off? I’d be looking for some answers.
I’d probably be facing indictment. And without a day off I’d have visited my union rep with the result being held without bail for the beating.
But with the time waiting trial, I could at least have a day off. More than the union ever gave me.
I’d rather stick with this one. Hoping to get an answer as to why the union ever allowed workers to go 180 days without a day off.
And why you now trust the union to protect you from the same.
I asked it a lot further up the thread, but you can’t seem to come up with an answer. I realize it takes time for those you pay every week to give you the tract to parrot. I can wait.
I asked what makes you trust the union that allows people to go 6 months without a day off in fear of being fired.
I’m patient. I’ll wait.
Point fairly noted against said strawman.
You mean the ones who voted to strike but don’t picket? Those ones in the OP that were mentioned? Not the ones that didn’t vote to strike and stayed at home, or the ones that didn’t vote to strike and still showed up to picket anyway, like the OP herself?
As, I suspect, would I. That’s not what the OP is talking about, however.
Good to see you wouldn’t be melodramatic about it, though. With skills and tempermant like that, you could make a great union boss.
I assure you, speaking as someone who drives on streets where the buses are still running: the non-union drivers are not remotely as competent as the union drivers. I am shying away from them just as much as I shy away from an incompetent semi driver on the freeway.
Private parking lots in/near downtown raised their rates from $9-12 per day to $50-60 per day on Monday. (Granted, Opening Day was Monday as well. I don’t know what today’s rates were.) I-25 is a parking lot. 50% of high shool students did not attend school Monday, as they depend on RTD. An intern working at my office is staying with a nearby relative because he cannot depend on the bus from his home. I have not seen the access-a-Ride arrive for my elderly neighbor the last two days. (And people are on the streets in rush hour who should be on the bus. They don’t know the drill. It’s amateur hour out there, duffer, I’m telling you, amateur hour! Who drives the speed limit on Hampden? Damnit, I… pant pant pant… sorry, different rant)
Carnage? No. Havoc? Definitely.
First off it was the back of an old envelope, secondly it’s Dumas.
Both Large Marge and the linked article kept using the 28K figure. Then in the very next breath complaining that nobody is getting any days off. No days off means overtime lots and lots of overtime. In her response to my post LM mentions that it is claimed that some drivers made 75K. :eek:
So just how many RTD drivers that worked the full year got a W2 for 28K? I got $5 that says the number is ZERO. Why? Simple, you can’t work all that overtime and not make way more than the 28K number. So for the quoted 28K number to be true you would have to have a rookie driver at starting wage who worked no overtime for the entire year, while all the other drivers are working for 6 months with no days off. Right. I bet there are lots of guys like that working for the RTD. not.
The 28K number is a pure strawman put forth by the union. Sorry you wern’t smart enough to see that. :wally