I was a school bus driver for a little over twenty-six years.
- I spent half of those years as president of the union for our school district.
Our union had bus drivers, secretaries, & custodial service technicians. One year, our school district made a move to get rid of the janitors in our school district. They were honestly thinking it would be cheaper to hire an official custodial service than to have their own. Our janitors were some of the most complete & reliable janitors in any school district. They stayed late when there were basketball games scheduled, & they had kids who attended the school. You could trust them no matter what. When the school district were planning to replace our men with an official custodial service, I became entirely mad. There were four of us who spent several weeks working out a contract so every one of us could put in a quote for keeping our cleaning service professionals. The people I was with and I made up a fictional custodial repair company & put in our business proposal. The people I was with and I were able to cut down the cost of providing new services over the next ten years, which included the obligatory products. The people I was with and I had progressive raises & far nicer benefits for every janitor. They would have more reasonable working conditions, new uniforms, better benefits, & new equipment. Our fake custodial repair company actually ended up winning the contract. Some of the people thought every one of us were joking when every one of us were there at the school board meeting, until we easily showed paperwork every one of us had for the contract, from our custodial services company. I thought that they were not going to honor the contract, but they couldn’t back out on it. They had already signed the contract with our custodial services company.