Facebook bus drivers hope to unionize

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.

 “While your employees earn extraordinary wages and are able to live and enjoy life in some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the Bay Area, these drivers can’t afford to support a family, send their children to school, or, least of all, afford to even dream of buying a house anywhere near where they work,” wrote Rome A. Aloise, secretary-treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 853.

“This is reminiscent of a time when noblemen were driven around in their coaches by their servants,” he added. “Frankly, little has changed; except the noblemen are your employees, and the servants are the bus drivers who carry them back and forth each day.”

Facebook drivers earn $18 to $20 an hour and are provided a “generous medical and dental insurance plan,” plus vacations, sick leave and holiday pay, Loop Transportation president Jeff Leonoudakis told The New York Times.

“In keeping with the fact that we provide this high level of wages and benefits to our drivers, I don’t think the union is necessary in this case,” he told the newspaper.

Facebook, for its part, declined to comment on the drivers’ attempts to organize or the position of Loop Transportation.

But driver Cliff Doi wakes up at 4:30 a.m. so that he can make the commute from his home in Oakland, California, to Loop’s bus yard in San Carlos in time for the beginning of his shift, according to the Teamsters blog. He finishes his morning shift by 11:10 a.m., and his evening shift doesn’t start until 5:15 p.m. But Bay Area traffic is so bad that it would probably take him an hour to drive home to Oakland and another hour to make it back to San Carlos, so he says it’s not worth it to drive home, and Loop doesn’t allow him to get another job during the afternoon, the blog said.

“Doi is forced to stay at the yard either sleeping in his car or in a company trailer that lacks heat, air conditioning or adequate seating and one bathroom to share with 40 other drivers,” the Teamsters blog said. “By the end of his split shifts, Doi has been at the yard or in his bus for 15 hours. He will drive home around 9:30 p.m. and get ready to do it all over again the next day.”

Another driver, Jimmy Maerina, lives in San Carlos, so he is able to head home between his morning and evening shifts, according to the blog. But he never sees his family members, who are asleep when he leaves his house each morning at 5:30 a.m., and are getting ready for bed when he gets home each night after 9 p.m.

He also says his $35,000 a year salary (before overtime) just barely covers the $1,100 a month he pays for company health insurance for his family and his $2,000 a month mortgage.

Leonoudakis told the Times that while the split shift is difficult, it’s also necessary because that’s what Facebook employees want. He said Loop set up a lounge for drivers (Doi says that’s the unheated trailer) with reclining chairs and a big-screen TV, and it would soon be installing bunk beds.  “We are trying to make the conditions as pleasant and comfortable as we can,” he told the newspaper.

The Teamsters told the Times that the majority of Facebook drivers want to be represented by Local 853, and that they would press Loop to grant the drivers union recognition.