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School-Bus Drivers Walk Off Job in Boston

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by YankeeFan, Oct 8, 2013.

  1. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    How is it taking longer? Don't they have to pick the kids up and drop them off at the same time every day? If it's taking longer, I would think parents would be raising holy hell because their kids are either late to school or late coming home.
     
  2. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Clearly you've never driven in Boston.
     
  3. waterytart

    waterytart Active Member

    Have you never used GPS? It routinely provides routes which are less efficient than ones used by a human who knows the area.
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    OK, but what's the net effect? Are kids getting home later? Are they getting to school later? If so, I would think parents would be very upset about that.
     
  5. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    The net affect is it's cutting into the drivers' fucking-around on the clock opportunities.

    We can't have that now, can we?
     
  6. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    GPS systems probably don't navigate you away from Boston Rotaries.
     
  7. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    Again, believe it or not, this isn't the only collective bargaining agreement that has ever contemplated whether the introduction of GPS (or other monitoriing) technology is a mandatory bargaining subject

    http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/labor_law/meetings/2011/ac2011/155.authcheckdam.pdf

     
  8. printit

    printit Member

    Nice pull on the opinion, but good Lord is that tortured reasoning by the NLRB. Yeah, a GPS in a public school bus driven only for the purpose of taking public school children to and from public school is exactly like a polygraph test or hidden surveillance cameras or drug/alcohol testing. Good grief.
     
  9. Morris816

    Morris816 Member

    From what Baron has said, I wonder if it's a case of the GPS not being able to recognize certain streets or routes and thus thinking a certain route is the best way to get there, when it really isn't.

    It's possible the buses are taking kids to homes that are accessed via dirt roads, alleyways, long driveways or cul-de-sacs that just happen to be offshoots of a main road. GPS doesn't always recognize these things.

    I don't know if it makes a major difference, but if you have a supervisor who gets nit-picky about every little detail (as opposed to questioning drivers who constantly go a mile off route between two stops), it's probably aggravating to the bus drivers.
     
  10. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    The decision discussed in the link had nothing to do with school buses or this specific case. It was simply an example of a situation in which the introduction tracking technology would be a mandatory bargaining topic.

    And the point has already been decided in Boston, anyway. The company and the union bargained over the topic and that negotiation resulted in the company introducing the technology.
     
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