Teamsters Back School Bus Drivers in Fight Against ‘Rampant’ Wage Theft

[Omaha Steve]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16394/teamsters_back_school_bus_drivers_in_rampant_wage_theft_struggle1

Monday, Mar 10, 2014, 3:03 pm

BY Bruce Vail



ROSEDALE, MD.—More than 350 Baltimore-area bus drivers are preparing to celebrate victory in a $1.25 million wage theft case against Durham School Services, an Illinois-based bus-contracting company with operations across much of the country.

The case, which covers the employees at Durham between March 2010 and September 2013, reflects a troubling national trend of companies cheating workers out of their earnings. “Wage theft is a huge problem, and it’s outrageous,” says Andrew Freeman, one of the attorneys at Brown Goldstein Levy, the Baltimore-based firm that filed the suit against Durham last year. In their suit, the plaintiffs accused the company of failing to pay employees for overtime work such as bus inspections, bus cleanings, fueling, and other related tasks.

The settlement of the U.S. District Court case should be finalized April 4, with distribution of the stolen wage money following immediately afterward, says Moe Jackson, a union organizer for International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 570. For almost two years, the local has been trying to organize the drivers and aides at Rosedale, Jackson says, where employees are also bristling over low pay, substandard benefits and overbearing management practices. The Teamsters initiated the wage theft case on behalf of the workers, officers say, as a step in the unionizing process.

At Rosedale, Durham operates under a contract with Baltimore City Public Schools, but its business extends to more than 30 U.S. states, according to company spokesperson Molly Hart. As of the 2013-2014 school year, Durham, a subsidiary of the U.K.-based National Express Group, employs more than 18,000 workers to transport about one million school kids on 17,000 vehicles.

FULL story at link.