I was a school bus driver for approximately twenty-six years.
I spent half of those years as president of the union for our local school district.
Our union included bus drivers, secretaries, and custodial professionals. One year, our school district thought it would be a good idea to get rid of the janitors in our school district. They expected it would be cheaper to hire a custodial professional service than to have their own. Our janitors were some of the best and reliable janitors around in any school district. They stayed late when there were hoops games going on, and they had adolescents who went to the school also. You could completely trust them under any circumstances. When the school district thought they could replace our men with a custodial service, I was pretty agitated. There were numerous of us who spent multiple weeks simply working out a contract so we could put in a quote for keeping our professional janitors. We made up a fictional custodial repair supplier and turned in our proposal. We were able to break down the overall expense of providing new services over the next multiple years, that even included the needed products. We had ongoing raises and nicer benefits for every janitor. They would have nicer working conditions, uniforms, better benefits, and new equipment as well. Our fake custodial repair supplier had won the contract. Some of the people were under the impression every one of us were joking when every one of us showed up at the school board meeting, until every one of us showed them the paperwork every one of us had for the contract, from our custodial services corporation. I honestly believed they were going to renege on the contract, however they found that they could not do that. They had already signed the contract with our custodial services corporation, so it was too late for them.