All ABOARD! Furious Facebook bus drivers join Teamsters union Facebook's shuttle bus drivers have voted to join the Teamsters union – as anger grows over the pay disparity between moneybags engineers and cash-strapped service workers. The unhappy drivers work for Loop Transportation, which has a contract to ferry Mark Zuckerberg's staff to and from San Francisco, the East Bay and the …
In California it is...then again, in California, bus drivers feel entitled to the same wages as a PhD working at Facebook. Things like raising and lowering your foot, moving your arms and nearly mindlessly navigating a loop come at a real premium!
Also, *where the hell* are these people living that they can't get there and back in 6 hours? It must be a real bitch to spend 3 hours getting to work and 3 hours getting home _anyway_. So since they claim to start at 6AM and end at 9PM, they are basically leaving at 3AM and getting home at midnight? I don't think so.
The "Loop" is from San Fransciso to Menio Park, CA. If you had read teh article you would have learned what loop driving is. I saw walk out and let the suits drive themselves to and fro. Let's see how long it takes the passengers to complain to Zuckerberg about the long six-hour not paid time without provisions to relax other than one trailer for 40 drivers mentioned below.
" Loop Transportation employees described starting work at the crack of dawn, driving Facebookers to work before clocking off for a six-hour unpaid break.
Many workers live too far away to get home during this down period, so spend the day snoozing in their car or hanging around in a miserable trailer with up to 40 other drivers."
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To all you clueless, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Ayn Rand types sounding off here, unionization is the only reasonable answer. $17 to $25 an hour is a pittance in the Bay area. Do you
ever care about the details of these workers lives. They get up at 5 am to leave at 5:30. Get home at 9 pm. A meal and a shit, shower, shave brings them to 10 pm. If they skip the tv news and late-nite talking heads, and instead just collapse into bed, ignoring their family, home and friends completely they might just get 7 hours sleep if they drop off instantly.
What's that, you say, "Educate yourselves"? I don't know many night school courses that start at 9 pm and will eventually help under-educated drivers to earn any more than they earn now. My dad took course after course and never earned an extra cent by them. He was probably lucky to hang onto his job, if they helped at all.
"Why don't you go home in the middle of the day?" Sure, it's really worth driving an hour to be home for 4 hours, only to have to turn around and drive back an hour. Just don't fall asleep, and hey, that's only 10 EXTRA hours of driving a week and gas is cheap, NOT.
"Why don't you educate yourselves during that 6 hour gap" Yeah sure, any 40 or 50 year old can concentrate in a stinking trailer jammed with 40 other guys jabbering away and watching tv.
"So go out to your car." You mean the car that is roasting in the sun? To try and lay out some books in the front seat, in the stifling heat, and actually accomplish anything? To improve oneself so one can be told no one hires over 50 year-olds? And over 40, not so much either.
I repeat, the only reasonable solution is a union to stand up for you, get you a decent wage and working conditions, and maybe to help you to help your kids enough to not get ensnared by the no-future treadmill that you are on. To break the cycle of poverty, (sorry for that cliche, but there's a lot of truth in it.)
Try living over here in the UK where "gas" (ie petrol) currently costs around £1.20 (=$1.88) per litre and tell us again how "expensive" it is!
Put it in context. In the UK you've got a reasonably efficient car, possibly doing 40-50mpg. Not many of those in the Bay Area, not helped by the California emissions regs that make them even less efficient. Juggling to achieve the same units (US gallons being smaller than Imperial, so headline mpg looks even worse) and allowing for some of the stupid big trucks, 20-30mpg is more typical. That's $7500 a year, and given that fuel has varied from $3/gal to $4/gal in the past year, it's a lot to handle. It's quite possible for commute costs to be 20% of someone's gross income.
6 hours a day to do what? Why NOT study? If he bloody Teamsters union was any good they'd be wheeling support out to those guys in the form of at least some kind of tutor faster than the speed of light instead of leaping up and down whining. Once educated those guys wouldn't necessarily have to work with Faecebook at all - you never know there might even be another budding Fuckerberg out there who will start something like Faecebook but which is actually useful, trustworthy and relevant.
The teamsters union is not any good.
Government jobs in this state are closed shop, only managers are exempt from being in the union.
I'm a senior scientist in the environmental unit, with a Ph,D and I get to pay $250/month union fees or them to agree a zero percent pay increase in each of the next 3 years
Also, *where the hell* are these people living that they can't get there and back in 6 hours? It must be a real bitch to spend 3 hours getting to work and 3 hours getting home
You have clearly not experienced Silicon Valley traffic.
For starters, in most of the Valley, you're looking at half a million dollars minimum to buy a house, and if you're in the nice bits like Palo Alto or Menlo Park or Mountain View, then you're either looking at a rabbit hutch or the wrong side of a million dollars (or both, in some cases). Rental for a family-sized house or apartment is probably a couple of thousand dollars a month minimum, and there's quite a bit of competition for what's available. I know a few people who live out towards Modesto, which is 80-90 miles away and therefore 90 minutes drive even with no traffic (apart from cops with speed guns encouraging you to take 90 minutes and not 60). Various highways, 85, 101, 880, 237 etc, all put the M25 to shame when it comes to imitating a car park, so that last 20-30 miles can easily take over an hour.
So, if you can't afford to live in the Valley itself, you're stuck living some distance away and yes, of that six hour gap you could be driving for at least four of the hours. There are probably dire consequences for failing to be there on time for the evening pick-up, so you've got to allow for contingencies. The morning/evening trips to home may be relatively OK, but if you've got to get to the bus garage to get your bus, then drive it to your pickup area, all as traffic is increasing for the rush-hour, the necessary start time gets earlier and the final end time get later.
Supposedly it's so pricey in silicon valley, the facebookers' and googlers' $100k salaries are barely enough to survive... certainly those who moved from elsewhere and were forced to pay market rates for housing. 100k salary, 50k taxes, 40k rent... ouch.
So if you're a bus driver making 30-40k, you won't find affordable housing within an hour's drive.
A London Bus Driver (Transit over the pond) earns around £25K a year, £22k national average. With overtime this can go up to about £28K. The UK minimum Wage is £6.50 and the minimum for a bus driver is £9.50 which goes up to about £12. At £/$1.60 then Facebook pays better than the UK, but not a lot.
I wonder how much the local transit drivers get paid.
Supposedly it's so pricey in silicon valley, the facebookers' and googlers' $100k salaries are barely enough to survive
The San Francisco suburbs, including Silicon Valley, is one of the most expensive places in the USA to live in. Believe me, it's impossible to live on $100K a year there, even if you never socialize and always eat at home. These drivers at $20/hour make $41.6K/year, they must have spouses that work.
Like you , I thought that the wages seemed quite good until I read the article. The driving around bit pays well but the sitting around bit doesn't pay anything.
It is similar to the Zero Hours agreements foisted on agency workers at places like Amazon and New Look warehouses here in the UK.
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It said that although Facebook workers earn "extraordinary" wages, the poorly paid drivers and other service workers can barely afford to send their kids to school, let alone buy a decent house anywhere near work.
Skilled employees versus unskilled. Don't want a crap job? Get a decent education.
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>Seeing that their "work" doesn't accomplish any useful to society…
Seeing as you are the final arbiter of such things, how's about a few more examples of professions that you consider worthless to "society"? This should be good.
Oh, and you'll be sure to tell us all what YOU do to advance the human race, won't you?
Cockwomble.
"Hell, let them strike, I'm sure Facebook employees can work remotely easier than most."
Since Facebook doesn't (directly) pay the wages of the drivers anyway, all that will do is destroy the bus company.
I really don't see how joining a union is going to get them home any earlier?
"To me (in the UK) the name mainly conjures up links to organised crime"
Yup, same crowd, however, it's usually the union management and their thugs that pretend to work amongst the rank & file workers. I have a of friends who are Teamsters and they are some of the most honest, hard working folks I know. But they're just truck drivers. They're only mixed up with the union because they don't have a choice (it's either join or else... Accidents do happen to independents who don't have the protection of the union).
...... before clocking off for a six-hour unpaid break.......Many workers live too far away to get home during this down period, so spend the day snoozing in their car or hanging around in a miserable trailer with up to 40 other drivers.
Call me insane, but how about spending those 6 hours getting yourself an education and as a result get a better job and moving on.
Or you could just sit there doing nothing for 6 hours a day and whine how well every one else is doing.
Then again, they could be treated better. According to this article, Google drivers have access to the Google gyms and cafeterias. Though of course, the article is essentially about the same complaint: work in the morning and late afternoon, with nothing to do in the middle.
Then get a new one. Plenty of people would love to earn even $17 an hour. This sounds like a case of sour grapes. Boohoo...those facebook people get paid a lot, but me as a bus driver ONLY gets $17-25 an hour. This just angers me. If you want a fat wage, aspire to be more than a unionized bus driver.
Maybe you should have read the linked article. The man earned $35.000./yr. before taxes and other deductions. His house note was $2,000/mo.(perfectly average) and his health insurance was $1,200/mo. Do the math. That's over $38,000/yr before he pays his federal taxes, state taxes, property taxes, car note, car insurance, house insurance, gas and maintenance for his car, groceries, clothing, house maintenance, cell phone, cable, school field trips for the kids. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, maybe a pair of bus tickets for a trip to the local shelter for a free meal. You schmuck.
The issue is that the cost of living in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area is off the hook expensive as others have stated. I knew a couple of people that worked there for tech companies some years ago (late 90's) that were paying $2200/month for a 1 bedroom flat on the 4th floor with one parking space in the underground car park. I can't imagine what the cost is now for a family that needs 3 bedrooms and space for two cars. Forget about the article lamenting that these drivers couldn't make enough to buy a house in the area. Most people in the US don't earn enough money to afford a house in the area. Even the outlying areas are expensive since many people that work for these same companies in low paying jobs have had to move further out a couple of times. At some point, there won't be anybody in the area to clean offices for less than $40/hour. It's not very bright to locate a company in the area these days. Those that do are impressed with the address and are making poor business decisions.
The traffic is horrible making a job driving a giant vehicle while scared lemmings in their shiny metal boxes are constantly cutting you off trying to make it to their desk on time or back home after spending the day pretending to work. If it was a milk run on wide and open streets, things might be different.
I didn't see how many hours the drivers work each day. Is it eight or closer to six? Any benefits? Does the company pay for physicals needed to maintain a commercial license?
None of the quotes in the article imply the drivers are unhappy about being paid less then the tech workers, so is that really what they're unhappy about.
I suspect the working conditions may be what they're actually complaining about, and while there may be some problems the fact that you live too far away from your job to go home at night is hardly the fault of your employer. If you want to live closer to your work either change home or change job.
If they really are complaining about getting paid less than tech workers at Facebook, then they need someone to tell them to stop being bloody silly. You can't legitimately complain your pay is different to someone doing a totally different job. It's the same stupidity you see in a lot of the arguments about pay disparity between men and women, in many of the cases I've see reported of women complaining they get paid less than men in their company they are not comparing their pay to men doing the same job. (Not to say their isn't any gender discrimination in any workplaces, just that people are not always making realistic assessment of the situation).
We live in world today where we can't believe what most media reports because they are owned by one side or the other of the political extremes - and rarely do people investigate what the truth actually is. If they did, all Polticians would strighten up or be voted out for their crooked ways.
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