Philly’s school bus drivers and maintenance workers want higher pay

Philadelphia School District bus drivers, maintenance workers, cleaners, and tradespeople are entering contract season.

Leaders of 32BJ SEIU District 1201, which represents 2,000 workers, are scheduled to begin talks with Philadelphia School District officials Thursday. Their current contract expires Aug. 31.

The bottom line for members of 32BJ SEIU District 1201 is higher pay, officials said.

Members’ current pay scale varies, from bus attendants, who are paid $30,762 annually, to building engineers, whose pay rate starts out at $51,155 and tops out at $77,832. The union’s highest-paid workers are its building construction workers, whose salary maxes out at $77,832.

Tradespeople — bricklayers, HVAC mechanics, electrical mechanics, plumbers, and roofers — are paid $62,899 at the top of the pay scale.

“We are the foundation of this district, and we’re not asking for the world here. We’re asking to not live in poverty, and we’re asking to help maintain our health insurance,” said Tim Finucan, 32BJ’s Pennsylvania state director.

Wages are not the only issue. Union leaders are also fighting for “a more clear ladder of opportunity for our membership to advance within the school district,” Finucan said. 32BJ also wants to codify ways it can work with the district to fill vacant jobs in a system that struggles to find qualified engineers and trades workers, including partnering with community organizations, clergy, and others to spread the word about open jobs.

“We want people to know if you can get into the school district, you know you’re going to have a good check, you know you’re going to have access to good health insurance, we know you’re going to have access to a pension,” Finucan said.

Naima DeBrest, a district spokesperson, said in a statement that officials “deeply value” 32BJ members and “will diligently engage in good faith negotiations with the hope of securing a new contract as soon as possible.”

If you want to know what 32BJ workers mean to the district, think back to February, when a major winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow on Philadelphia, said Ronald Smith, a longtime district building engineer and member of the union’s bargaining committee.

“The whole city was encased in snow and ice, and the engineers still had to be there, and we got there,” Smith said.

Building engineers — who are in charge of the operations of district facilities, with responsibilities from keeping up with schools’ heating and cooling systems to making sure schoolyards are maintained — are still waiting for the extra pay they are contractually owed for working in those conditions, Smith said.

“It was a slap in the face when we had to fight to get paid for that,” Smith said. “A lot of engineers are leaving the district — they feel disrespected. Some of the fights that we have to fight, we shouldn’t have to.”

A too-small workforce affects the district and its workers in myriad ways, Smith said.

“We’re bringing in new guys without the trainees having enough time to really learn the basics of the trade,” Smith said. “It’s not really fair to the trainee, it’s not fair to the schools. A lot of these buildings don’t have adequate staffing.”

Despite friction in some areas, union officials are approaching talks with the district as partners, Smith and Finucan said. Officials are well aware of the district’s looming $300 million deficit, they said; 32BJ members have advocated for more funding for Philadelphia schools in City Hall and Harrisburg, and will continue to do so.

But union member Sherrie Gordan said it is tougher and tougher to feed and house her three kids on what she earns as a cleaner in the district.

“Even when I work overtime, so much gets taken out for taxes that it’s still not enough,“ Gordan said in a statement. ”Grocery prices keep going up, and my kids eat more every week. I spend $500 on groceries, but it’s gone in just a week. It’s not like it used to be when you could actually afford it.”