Bus Bid Process Sparks Labor Complaint

By John Voket

As six commercial school transportation companies were meeting with Newtown school officials, who are soliciting bids to replace the local owner-operators bus system, those independent drivers were meeting with an attorney. The result of that meeting was a complaint lodged with the State Department of Labor Relations alleging the district has violated the Municipal Employees Labor Relations Act (MERA).

The complaint, issued by attorney Henry F. Murray, alleges a violation of Section 7-470(4) of MERA in that the board has failed to bargain with the owner-operators through their elected contract committee with respect to its decision to subcontract school bus driving responsibilities. The complaint characterizes Newtown’s owner-operators as “an organization that has existed for many decades whose only purpose is, and has been, through their contract committee, the negotiation and enforcement of contracts governing the terms and conditions of compensation and service on behalf of the school bus drivers who provide the transportation needs for the Newtown public schools.”

Mr Murray contends that while the labor relations board has never conducted a representation election certifying the Newtown owner-operators as the exclusive representative for individuals in the bargaining unit, the Newtown Board of Education has negotiated and bargained with the owner-operators’ contract committee for a series of successive five-year agreements going back several decades.

“A clear application of the facts to the statutory requirements will demonstrate that the Newtown owner-operators is an ‘employee organization’ as that term is understood and applied under MERA,” Mr Murray wrote.

The attorney states that the employment relationship between the Board of Education and the owner-operators is one that can be properly be characterized and categorized as that of employer and employee.

“The BOE has recognized the Newtown owner-operators and its contract committee for many years as the organization and bargaining representative for the school bus owner-operators,” Mr Murray wrote. “The Newtown owner-operators therefore asserts that it is an employee organization under the Act and that the Newtown BOE was under an obligation to bargain with its contract committee on the decision to subcontract the existing work that the owner-operators perform for the board. The board’s failure to do so is a violation of the Act.”

The attorney said he has written more extensively than usual in filing the complaint on behalf of the Newtown owner-operators because he believes labor relations officials need “to understand at the outset that this charge presents both substantial factual issues requiring resolution as well as substantive and important legal issues that will no doubt be raised by the respondent in defense to this prohibited practice complaint.”

The current owner-operators contract is set to expire on June 30, 2012. In mid-May, the Newtown School District advertised an opportunity for interested parties to tender sealed bids for student transportation services for the 2012 school year. According to the notice, the district “invites the submission of sealed bids from reputable and qualified bus transportation companies for furnishing student transportation services in Newtown public schools beginning July 1, 2012.”

Bids will be received until 2 pm on June 23, at which time and place all bids will be publicly opened. The district also held a workshop for interested bidders June 7 that was attended, according to owner-operators spokesperson Carrie Schierloh, by representatives of Durham School Services, which claims to be the nation’s second largest student transportation company. Other attendees represented Baumann & Son’s Buses, Inc, of Ridgefield, All-Star Transportation of Connecticut, Dattco, Long Island-based Towne Bus Corp, and First Student, Inc, of Connecticut.