Facebook bus drivers hope to unionize
Facebook bus drivers hope to unionize
by Marisa Taylor @marisahtaylor
The controversy surrounding the shuttle buses that squire hundreds of Bay Area employees of Silicon Valley tech companies like Google and Apple to and from work continued last week.
But this time, the debate isn’t focused on the privileges enjoyed by the workers on those buses, which local protesters have argued are representative of the growing class divide in San Francisco’s Bay Area, on a few occasions physically blocking the shuttles and demanding affordable housing.
Instead, it’s about the bus drivers themselves. Drivers of Facebook shuttle buses are trying to unionize, saying their pay is too low to make ends meet. They also complain that working split shifts, which involve starting around 6 a.m. to take Facebook employees to work and then finishing after 9 p.m. after they’ve taken them back home at night, are inconvenient.
The drivers are seeking help from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last Thursday [PDF] and asked him to intervene on behalf of the drivers, who are contracted by Loop Transportation ...
More here: http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2014/10/6/facebook-bus-drivershopetounionize.html
