The other side of the bus story

There is a guest opinion in the PC today which sheds some light on the bus drivers' position. I wrote earlier in the week about how they endangered school kids by striking in the middle of the day. Bus driver Dean Phinney has a lot to say about it.

Phinney says the bus drivers "asked the school district for a student list to enable us to call the night before and to tell parents about any disruption of service, but this was denied." I am damn glad they denied that request. Speaking as a parent, I hope a group of disgruntled workers wouldn't be allowed access to my phone number and address.

He then lists all the ways in which they tried to contact the superintendent, the school board, and the PTO. He includes this out of context quote that makes no sense: We were compared to the old, less-than-legitimate Teamsters when the board president said, "When Teamsters were Teamsters under Jimmy Hoffa." How about giving us a little context so we can understand exactly what was said, Mr. Phinney.

I had wondered how the schools were able to handle the situation so well when the drivers abruptly struck in the middle of the day. Now I understand. They knew something like that could happen and probably were pretty prepared. It'd have been nice if the PC had done a little more investigating and reported that.

At the end of his opinion, Phinney writes:

"We tried several different venues and kept getting the doors slammed on us. What were we to do? We had no intention to use the students as "pawns" as stated by the P-C. Drivers and associates needed to have people finally take notice and listen."

After reading this opinion, I think it's very clear that Phinney and his fellow bus drivers had every intention of using the kids as pawns. They felt they had to do that in order to get people to listen. I support their efforts to unionize, but their methods are not at all justified and frankly make me sick.