On Monday, August 25, 2008, school bus drivers employed by Durham School Services unanimously ratified a new collective bargaining agreement.   Durham beat out Kuzmeskus to provide school bus transportation for the city of Northampton. 

School districts regularly try to save money on school bus transportation costs by putting the revenue contracts to provide such busing out to competitive bid.  Unionized school bus drivers normally view such processes with trepidation, and the re-bid in Northampton was no exception.  Our members were quite nervous as elected officials in Northampton city government needed lots of prodding by Local 1459 officials to carry over hard-fought protections won after many years of collective bargaining from one school bus contractor to the next.  In the end, a fair and equitable contract was agreed upon by our members and Durham School Services.

Even though Northampton is a prevailing wage community, and thusly the union wage scale must be adopted by a successor company providing school bus transportation as per Massachusetts state law, again the limitations of prevailing wage laws were evident throughout the school bus revenue contract re-bid.  Important components of the school bus drivers' labor contract, such as health insurance, tuition reimbursement, etc., are not protected by prevailing wage law.  Only the aggressive defense of those benefits and working conditions by our workers led by Local 1459 officials protected and maintained years of collective bargaining gains.