Portland Public School bus drivers ratify contract

Union school bus drivers at Portland Public Schools ratified a new union contract Feb. 29, after more than two years of working without a contract. The group of 85 workers drive buses for special education students, and are represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757.

The new contract runs through June 30, 2010 and is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2006. Drivers will get annual raises of 2.5 percent, including retroactive pay back to last July, and a flat $625 for the 18 months before that. Under the previous contract, driver pay started at $12.69 and rose to $16.51 after 10 years.

The new contract also raises the district’s capped contribution to health coverage by 6 percent a year starting Oct. 1. That’s also when the new statewide school district employee health insurance pool comes into being, so there may be some reduction in the cost of coverage.

Under the new deal, the union agreed to give up employer-paid retiree health coverage after 2014. Currently the district pays for it for to five years or until the retiree is eligible for Medicare.

“[The new contract] was quite a bit better than the one we turned down,” said Randy Shaw, a PPS driver and member of the union’s Executive Board. “But a lot of the drivers still wanted to turn it down,” Shaw said.