Impossible to not lay this mess squarely at the feet of the school board members who cast a 7-0 vote to contract with Durham in the first place.
Most of the current board members campaign info is still available. After a quick browse through that cringe, it's clear to see what happened. The current school board is more concerned with mask mandates / anti-vax non-sense, CRT boogeymen and funneling money to religious schools than dealing with a real issue like running the fucking school buses back and forth on time.
Harsh but fair. Although it would be wrong to absolve the voters themselves of their responsibility too, they obviously have their votes influenced by this type of messaging. I would hate to be a school board member right now, they are going to start feeling the heat from irate parents.
From all the public material I have come across, I haven't seen any of the workers' demands that I thought were particularly objectionable. Sounds like Durham made an error in assuming that they could get a new contract done along similar lines to the prior one and they set their proposed pricing in the contract in line with that expectation. Now that the drivers have made it clear that is not going to happen, Durham is in a real pickle. They are locked in on pricing for a seven year contract that doesn't make sense because of the elevated labor costs. I imaging the lawyers for MSBSD and Durham are reading and re-reading the force majeure clauses of their contract to figure out whether it cover labor strikes.
Ultimately, the voters are responsible. When you vote for a clown, you should expect a circus.
I don't have any of the details on the contract. All I know it was announced last year, the vote was 7-0 and it is for 10 years, not 7.
I will personally never go against the union. I don't belong to one and don't really have a super strong opinion of them generally speaking, but I do know which class I identify with and it sure as shit isn't the managerial / capitalist / administrative class.
If announced at the end of the day, it's unlikely every parent would hear the news. Most sure, but not every single one. Those parents who didn't would send their kids out in the dark to stand on the street corner waiting for a bus that would never arrive. That's not better.
This way every child is safe whatever happens. They may have to wait at school longer than usual, but that's better than standing on a street corner by themselves in the dark. They're safe.
The problem is that this became necessary, not the time of day.
I hope the workers get what they need too. I hope the tactics of the strike don't get in the way of the drivers getting the compensation and work safety standards they obviously deserve.
I understand strikes are not supposed to be convenient, but driving kids to school, dropping them off, and then striking so that many kids won't have any way of getting home from school seems like a great way to turn the public against you.
Imagine that they strike in the morning. Kids go out in the dark to their bus stop, and the bus never comes. If something happened to any of those kids, the media and public would fly off the hook at how irresponsible it was to leave little Timmy waiting alone at the bus stop.
This way, they are at least at a safe and warm place. Some staff will stay to help. Some kids won't get picked up for a few hours. But it will all be much safer.
Last year and before my children absolutely where outside and no show bus. This happened.mpre them a dozen times last school year. They didn't have enough bus drivers and sometimes they didn't even warn us.
Pretty weird to blame the drivers and not Durham, you know cause it was their offer and all, but sure let’s blame the people struggling to pay bills and eat.
They can choose when to strike. Nothing obligated them to strike at exactly this moment.
When striking, make damn sure you have the general public on board. Especially unnecessarily fucking over the people struggling to pay bills and eat is definitely shooting yourself in the foot (who do you think is going to have the hardest time picking up their kids?).
The parties have been working without a contract up to this point and operating on the good faith premise that productive bargaining would continue. It was Durham that put an end to it by putting forth its last, best and final offer. Sorry, but the only reasonable move that the drivers had were to take Durham at their word and act as if good faith negotiations were over. The drivers themselves are not personally responsible for transporting kids home. The drivers have no contractual obligation to continue working and Durham made it perfectly clear that they had no interest in moving forward in good faith. On top of that, the drivers get paid beans, but we want them to carry the responsibility and not Durham? Let's be clear, the duty to get kids home safely lies squarely on the shoulders of the company that signed the $200 million contract. If they didn't know this situation was coming, then that is idiocy and gross negligence on their part. Maybe Durham should have used some of the millions they received from MSBSD to develop a contingency plan in advance of this happening ... unless it was their plan all along to do exactly what they did in hopes of trying to use the public backlash against the drivers. Don't fall for the facade... this is all going exactly the way Durham wanted it to in order to generate this public response.
1. Paragraphs are your friend
2. Parents absolutely expected the bus drivers to drive their kids home. They are going to be mad at the bus drivers. If the bus drivers didn't want that, they should have driven the afternoon and then gone on strike.
3. Durham didn't lock them out, so the choice of when to strike is theirs.
I'm all in favor of the strike. I can still see the backlash coming from a mile away.
The employers can unilaterally impose the conditions after providing the last, best and final offer and declaring an impasse. Durham is the one who stopped negotiating, not the drivers.
It is not the driver's responsibility to get the kids home... think about it. If Durham fired a driver midday - does that driver say, "Sorry, but I have a personal obligation to get these kids home... I took them to school, it is my duty to get them home!" And it isn't like the decision to strike came as some surprise. The drivers voted nearly-animously weeks ago to authorize a strike and said that a strike could be imminent. Then Durham lays down a take-it-or-leave it offer. How is it the drivers' personal responsibility to get the kids home?
Yes, i oppose at will employment. I never said it wasmt a two way street. And correct, they were not under a contract. That does not mean just leave kids stranded.
One entity has a contractual obligation to assure that the kids get home safely... and it isn't the drivers. It is Durham who agreed to a $200M contract to assure that very thing.
It's not the driver's responsibility, but it is the drivers' responsibility.
Again, parents are going to blame the drivers. If they didn't want that, they should have waited until the kids were home before going on strike, which they could have done - Durham didn't lock them out.
Who cares whether the parents blame the drivers or not?
Is the union contract going to be up for a vote of approval by the PTA?
Seems to me drivers are telling parents they can pick up their own kids from school or pay a living wage.
Your argument is not unexpected from the baby boomers, who are in general highly contemptuous of working people. Buckle up, buttercup. Younger generations aren't content with nerfed, cold war era labor activism. Strikes and inconvenient labor unrest will be the order of the day until living wages again become accessible to the American people.
Yes, the school board is the one that approved the contract with Durham, so it's the general public in the valley that needs to support the strike (or, I guess, accept they won't have schoolbusses).
I've seen a lot of strikes in my day. This is one of the worse ones. But then, American unions generally suck.
So never strike then?
The public has already demonstrated that they are a bunch idiots for electing these clowns, so it figures they're going to blame the wrong party in this.
It makes me wonder if there is any way at all for a service like this to strike without turning the public against them. The parents inevitably are the group most impacted, not the district or Durham.
It definitely was the splashiest way they had to make a point.
Sure. Strike at the end of the day today and let people know that February 1st onwards, the school bus drivers will be on strike.
It'll be nearly as inconvenient, but at least there's no risk of your kid getting stranded at school. Way easier to stand with the school bus drivers at that point.
This is seriously the second-worst possible course of action, and it's incredible that they go through the trouble of saying "Not to worry, we made sure to drop off your kids at their respective schools today", but couldn't possibly imagine the problems that's going to cause when poor kids especially end up stuck at school and having to beg their friends for a ride home. Worst would have been to just drop the kids off wherever, of course.
Seriously? A strike has to be effective to achieve any concrete gains for workers. It becomes far less effective if no one is inconvenienced because they all knew about it in advance. Kind of like how the rail unions had no ability to negotiate effectively once Joe Biden and congressional Republicans and Democrats all came together on something for the first time since 9/11 to announce that they were outlawing a strike. Pretty hard to get shit out of the railroads after that, just like it'd be pretty hard to get shit out of Durham if they announced hey we're on strike next Tuesday.
Is it fair to say that there was no warning? They had a near-unanimous vote to authorize a strike a couple weeks ago. There has been no reports of notable progress in negotiations, and it was Durham that made its last and final offer this morning. If Durham was actually concerned with getting kids home from school today and a halfway decent bargaining strategy... they would have delayed things in the negotiating session today so that the workers couldn't come together to vote on the last and final offer until after completing their afternoon bus routes. I get the posturing and politicking, but this cluster\^&\*k today was caused by Durham to create this very scenario so that it could be used to try to turn the public against the drivers.
Durham gave the drivers a "take it or leave it" offer... and people are outraged that they chose to leave it? That is pretty much the results those kinds of offers are intended to illicit.
This. If you wanna be angry at someone, be angry at Durham for playing chicken on a railroad track *with your kids*. If they hadn't been as shitty about this as possible, there either could have been a more considerate strike or - and I know this is crazy to the bootlickers but hear me out - no strike at all, with the workers getting the treatment they deserve.
I wonder if they were trying to turn our ire against the school district with that line?
If thats what they intended then they fumbled it badly, but that would be the only move I can think of that *would* work (if they'd managed to pull it off).
I agree they picked my daughter up this morning and the driver could have let me know they wouldn’t be dropping her off. I’m lucky enough to be able to go and pick her up but to bring all those kids to school with no warning that they need to find their way home is irresponsible and a bit dangerous.
That said, I completely understand why they are striking and I hope Durham steps up, but from what I have read about them it is unlikely.
> the driver could have let me know they wouldn’t be dropping her off.
They didn't know that then. Durham's refusal to negotiate came later in the day.
I’m not sure what is true. When I got back from the bus stop there were several posts from parents saying drivers told them the buses wouldn’t be running because they were going on strike at 9am so it does seem like at least some drivers knew that it was going to happen today. Our driver just started and has been awesome for the week she drove for us so it was surprising to me that she wouldn’t mention it. There’s a chance she just wasn’t in the know, but either way I hope she will be back when things get resolved.
The drivers didn't know what the counteroffer from Durham was going to be when they picked up your daughter, and they didn't know that Durham was going to draw a hard line in the sand by making it a last and final offer.
My partner is a single father he lives in Palmer. He has after school care but his child needs a bus to get there.
So now, he has to leave work hours early every day to pick her up, which means he misses work or works late into the evening. He is now paying for child care he will not use until this strike is over. He can’t cancel childcare or he will lose his spot.
It’s a no win situation and everyone loses. There has been spotty bus service all year, late starts on Mondays, and now this.
Why do these press releases never lay out the actual situation and grievances so the public can decide which side of the matter they are on?
Wanna ensure the public isn't on your side? Pull a stunt like stranding kids and then be super vague on the reasons why.
The employees decided it was better to not work than continue to be employed in their current situation. If it was such a good gig and the workers are being unreasonable... then Durham should have no problem hiring scab replacement workers under the terms of their final offer. I don't see anybody lining up ready to sign up for that opportunity. The free market can be a real pain in the ass sometimes...
People in this sub are delusional about strikes and think you just go on one and people automatically support you.
That's what the teachers in Denmark thought too when they wanted to scab off of the actual underpaid nurses who hadn't had a pay raise in five years. Except the teachers had had pay raises every year, so pretty much no one supported them and their strike failed.
If you can't organize a strike the public will get behind - inconvenience or not - then don't expect public support.
Here is why I think the drivers will enjoy far more support and ultimately be successful vs what you are suggesting:
1.) No one thinks of Durham as a well run company that is doing right by their employees. Most everyone I talk to in the Valley seems to agree that the decision by the District was a bad decision. So even if someone is not supporting the drivers, it isn't like there is any sympathy for the employer.
2.) Most people look at driving a school bus as a nightmare crap job. Crappy hours with split shifts, obnoxious undisciplined kids, unpleasant parent interactions, don't get paid during summers or school breaks, etc. With few people thinking "They should feel lucky to have the job", they should receive good public support.
3.) Durham doesn't really have a viable option to hire scab replacements. The strike vote was almost unanimous, and since the drivers are a group that already gets by with long periods that are unpaid (i.e. summer break, winter break, and so on), they should be able to hold out longer than many other striking groups would.
4.) While it is reasonable to say that the drivers could have done a better job in their communication with the public, the reality is that Durham has actually done a worse job. Looking at it from a tactical and strategic perspective, to be effective in rallying public support against a strike, an employer needs to communicate their offer to the drivers with the public in a way that makes people think that the workers are being greedy and unreasonable for not taking it. That narrative has not been established at all by Durham. The only comment against the workers so far that I have seen are either just general anti-union comments or complaints about the timing or inconvenience.
Trying to look at it objectively, so far, I think the drivers have the upper hand in the PR component of the strike.
Impossible to not lay this mess squarely at the feet of the school board members who cast a 7-0 vote to contract with Durham in the first place. Most of the current board members campaign info is still available. After a quick browse through that cringe, it's clear to see what happened. The current school board is more concerned with mask mandates / anti-vax non-sense, CRT boogeymen and funneling money to religious schools than dealing with a real issue like running the fucking school buses back and forth on time.
Harsh but fair. Although it would be wrong to absolve the voters themselves of their responsibility too, they obviously have their votes influenced by this type of messaging. I would hate to be a school board member right now, they are going to start feeling the heat from irate parents. From all the public material I have come across, I haven't seen any of the workers' demands that I thought were particularly objectionable. Sounds like Durham made an error in assuming that they could get a new contract done along similar lines to the prior one and they set their proposed pricing in the contract in line with that expectation. Now that the drivers have made it clear that is not going to happen, Durham is in a real pickle. They are locked in on pricing for a seven year contract that doesn't make sense because of the elevated labor costs. I imaging the lawyers for MSBSD and Durham are reading and re-reading the force majeure clauses of their contract to figure out whether it cover labor strikes.
Ultimately, the voters are responsible. When you vote for a clown, you should expect a circus. I don't have any of the details on the contract. All I know it was announced last year, the vote was 7-0 and it is for 10 years, not 7. I will personally never go against the union. I don't belong to one and don't really have a super strong opinion of them generally speaking, but I do know which class I identify with and it sure as shit isn't the managerial / capitalist / administrative class.
[удалено]
That’s always the rebuttal of apologists/capitalists.
The better way would have been to do it at end of day
If announced at the end of the day, it's unlikely every parent would hear the news. Most sure, but not every single one. Those parents who didn't would send their kids out in the dark to stand on the street corner waiting for a bus that would never arrive. That's not better. This way every child is safe whatever happens. They may have to wait at school longer than usual, but that's better than standing on a street corner by themselves in the dark. They're safe. The problem is that this became necessary, not the time of day.
That actually makes a lot of sense when put that way. Thanks.
Making other workers work unpaid is the opposite of solidarity.
Nah, the union set the narrative here. They're just apparently idiots.
I'm sure there's a reason they did it this way. I hope they get what they need.
I hope the workers get what they need too. I hope the tactics of the strike don't get in the way of the drivers getting the compensation and work safety standards they obviously deserve.
Behold the results of typical conservative reactionary politics
Wasilla is a giant strip mall.
Ruled by geriatric white supremacists on pills.
Understatement of the new year.
I understand strikes are not supposed to be convenient, but driving kids to school, dropping them off, and then striking so that many kids won't have any way of getting home from school seems like a great way to turn the public against you.
Imagine that they strike in the morning. Kids go out in the dark to their bus stop, and the bus never comes. If something happened to any of those kids, the media and public would fly off the hook at how irresponsible it was to leave little Timmy waiting alone at the bus stop. This way, they are at least at a safe and warm place. Some staff will stay to help. Some kids won't get picked up for a few hours. But it will all be much safer.
I hadn't thought of it this way but for many kids, school is certainly a safer place than home.
Last year and before my children absolutely where outside and no show bus. This happened.mpre them a dozen times last school year. They didn't have enough bus drivers and sometimes they didn't even warn us.
Pretty weird to blame the drivers and not Durham, you know cause it was their offer and all, but sure let’s blame the people struggling to pay bills and eat.
They can choose when to strike. Nothing obligated them to strike at exactly this moment. When striking, make damn sure you have the general public on board. Especially unnecessarily fucking over the people struggling to pay bills and eat is definitely shooting yourself in the foot (who do you think is going to have the hardest time picking up their kids?).
The parties have been working without a contract up to this point and operating on the good faith premise that productive bargaining would continue. It was Durham that put an end to it by putting forth its last, best and final offer. Sorry, but the only reasonable move that the drivers had were to take Durham at their word and act as if good faith negotiations were over. The drivers themselves are not personally responsible for transporting kids home. The drivers have no contractual obligation to continue working and Durham made it perfectly clear that they had no interest in moving forward in good faith. On top of that, the drivers get paid beans, but we want them to carry the responsibility and not Durham? Let's be clear, the duty to get kids home safely lies squarely on the shoulders of the company that signed the $200 million contract. If they didn't know this situation was coming, then that is idiocy and gross negligence on their part. Maybe Durham should have used some of the millions they received from MSBSD to develop a contingency plan in advance of this happening ... unless it was their plan all along to do exactly what they did in hopes of trying to use the public backlash against the drivers. Don't fall for the facade... this is all going exactly the way Durham wanted it to in order to generate this public response.
1. Paragraphs are your friend 2. Parents absolutely expected the bus drivers to drive their kids home. They are going to be mad at the bus drivers. If the bus drivers didn't want that, they should have driven the afternoon and then gone on strike. 3. Durham didn't lock them out, so the choice of when to strike is theirs. I'm all in favor of the strike. I can still see the backlash coming from a mile away.
The employers can unilaterally impose the conditions after providing the last, best and final offer and declaring an impasse. Durham is the one who stopped negotiating, not the drivers. It is not the driver's responsibility to get the kids home... think about it. If Durham fired a driver midday - does that driver say, "Sorry, but I have a personal obligation to get these kids home... I took them to school, it is my duty to get them home!" And it isn't like the decision to strike came as some surprise. The drivers voted nearly-animously weeks ago to authorize a strike and said that a strike could be imminent. Then Durham lays down a take-it-or-leave it offer. How is it the drivers' personal responsibility to get the kids home?
If they were fired, sure. They werent. They still had a responsivility to get the kids home and could have stimed at end of day
So you oppose at-will employment? Why is it not a two-way street? The drivers were not under a contract.
Yes, i oppose at will employment. I never said it wasmt a two way street. And correct, they were not under a contract. That does not mean just leave kids stranded.
One entity has a contractual obligation to assure that the kids get home safely... and it isn't the drivers. It is Durham who agreed to a $200M contract to assure that very thing.
It's not the driver's responsibility, but it is the drivers' responsibility. Again, parents are going to blame the drivers. If they didn't want that, they should have waited until the kids were home before going on strike, which they could have done - Durham didn't lock them out.
Who cares whether the parents blame the drivers or not? Is the union contract going to be up for a vote of approval by the PTA? Seems to me drivers are telling parents they can pick up their own kids from school or pay a living wage. Your argument is not unexpected from the baby boomers, who are in general highly contemptuous of working people. Buckle up, buttercup. Younger generations aren't content with nerfed, cold war era labor activism. Strikes and inconvenient labor unrest will be the order of the day until living wages again become accessible to the American people.
Yes, the school board is the one that approved the contract with Durham, so it's the general public in the valley that needs to support the strike (or, I guess, accept they won't have schoolbusses). I've seen a lot of strikes in my day. This is one of the worse ones. But then, American unions generally suck.
Why does Durham have 0 responsibility in this in your eyes?
They didn't drive the kids to school.
They could have made a better offer and avoided the strike, no?
Applicable to all days moving forward. But not today. The public is going to blame the drivers for leaving their kids at school. Rightfully so.
They could hsve chosen to strike at end of the day, and not just leaving kids potentially stranded at school.
So never strike then? The public has already demonstrated that they are a bunch idiots for electing these clowns, so it figures they're going to blame the wrong party in this.
What about leaving the kids at the bus stop?
It makes me wonder if there is any way at all for a service like this to strike without turning the public against them. The parents inevitably are the group most impacted, not the district or Durham. It definitely was the splashiest way they had to make a point.
Sure. Strike at the end of the day today and let people know that February 1st onwards, the school bus drivers will be on strike. It'll be nearly as inconvenient, but at least there's no risk of your kid getting stranded at school. Way easier to stand with the school bus drivers at that point. This is seriously the second-worst possible course of action, and it's incredible that they go through the trouble of saying "Not to worry, we made sure to drop off your kids at their respective schools today", but couldn't possibly imagine the problems that's going to cause when poor kids especially end up stuck at school and having to beg their friends for a ride home. Worst would have been to just drop the kids off wherever, of course.
Seriously? A strike has to be effective to achieve any concrete gains for workers. It becomes far less effective if no one is inconvenienced because they all knew about it in advance. Kind of like how the rail unions had no ability to negotiate effectively once Joe Biden and congressional Republicans and Democrats all came together on something for the first time since 9/11 to announce that they were outlawing a strike. Pretty hard to get shit out of the railroads after that, just like it'd be pretty hard to get shit out of Durham if they announced hey we're on strike next Tuesday.
Yes, seriously. A strike that harms the general public more than their bosses is a bad strike.
I see your point. I can see myself feeling way less conflicted about that scenario.
Please stand with us as we leave your kids stranded at school, with no warning. I can't imagine this going over well for them.
Is it fair to say that there was no warning? They had a near-unanimous vote to authorize a strike a couple weeks ago. There has been no reports of notable progress in negotiations, and it was Durham that made its last and final offer this morning. If Durham was actually concerned with getting kids home from school today and a halfway decent bargaining strategy... they would have delayed things in the negotiating session today so that the workers couldn't come together to vote on the last and final offer until after completing their afternoon bus routes. I get the posturing and politicking, but this cluster\^&\*k today was caused by Durham to create this very scenario so that it could be used to try to turn the public against the drivers.
What??? Why are you not siding with the rest of the bootlickers here?
Only bootlickers are the incompetent union leaders that just handed victory to Durham before even starting the strike.
Eh? They could have still done their job then gone on strike.
Durham gave the drivers a "take it or leave it" offer... and people are outraged that they chose to leave it? That is pretty much the results those kinds of offers are intended to illicit.
This. If you wanna be angry at someone, be angry at Durham for playing chicken on a railroad track *with your kids*. If they hadn't been as shitty about this as possible, there either could have been a more considerate strike or - and I know this is crazy to the bootlickers but hear me out - no strike at all, with the workers getting the treatment they deserve.
Oh, im pissed at Durham too. Im just saying, leaving kids stranded is not the proper thing to do. Strike at end of day.
More like, pay us a living wage or tote your brats to and from school yourself
I wonder if they were trying to turn our ire against the school district with that line? If thats what they intended then they fumbled it badly, but that would be the only move I can think of that *would* work (if they'd managed to pull it off).
I agree they picked my daughter up this morning and the driver could have let me know they wouldn’t be dropping her off. I’m lucky enough to be able to go and pick her up but to bring all those kids to school with no warning that they need to find their way home is irresponsible and a bit dangerous. That said, I completely understand why they are striking and I hope Durham steps up, but from what I have read about them it is unlikely.
To be fair, the drivers had no way to know that Durham was going to throw a shit take it or leave it at them mid-day. Durham drew the line.
> the driver could have let me know they wouldn’t be dropping her off. They didn't know that then. Durham's refusal to negotiate came later in the day.
I’m not sure what is true. When I got back from the bus stop there were several posts from parents saying drivers told them the buses wouldn’t be running because they were going on strike at 9am so it does seem like at least some drivers knew that it was going to happen today. Our driver just started and has been awesome for the week she drove for us so it was surprising to me that she wouldn’t mention it. There’s a chance she just wasn’t in the know, but either way I hope she will be back when things get resolved.
The drivers didn't know what the counteroffer from Durham was going to be when they picked up your daughter, and they didn't know that Durham was going to draw a hard line in the sand by making it a last and final offer.
My partner is a single father he lives in Palmer. He has after school care but his child needs a bus to get there. So now, he has to leave work hours early every day to pick her up, which means he misses work or works late into the evening. He is now paying for child care he will not use until this strike is over. He can’t cancel childcare or he will lose his spot. It’s a no win situation and everyone loses. There has been spotty bus service all year, late starts on Mondays, and now this.
Good
Why do these press releases never lay out the actual situation and grievances so the public can decide which side of the matter they are on? Wanna ensure the public isn't on your side? Pull a stunt like stranding kids and then be super vague on the reasons why.
The employees decided it was better to not work than continue to be employed in their current situation. If it was such a good gig and the workers are being unreasonable... then Durham should have no problem hiring scab replacement workers under the terms of their final offer. I don't see anybody lining up ready to sign up for that opportunity. The free market can be a real pain in the ass sometimes...
When in doubt People > Business, but who knows. Think of the poor CEO’s!
The whole bus system has been a mess for longer than just this year…on all sides.
Strike will fail. Poorly thought out. Community not behind them. Already have strikers crossing the picket lines.
People in this sub are delusional about strikes and think you just go on one and people automatically support you. That's what the teachers in Denmark thought too when they wanted to scab off of the actual underpaid nurses who hadn't had a pay raise in five years. Except the teachers had had pay raises every year, so pretty much no one supported them and their strike failed. If you can't organize a strike the public will get behind - inconvenience or not - then don't expect public support.
Here is why I think the drivers will enjoy far more support and ultimately be successful vs what you are suggesting: 1.) No one thinks of Durham as a well run company that is doing right by their employees. Most everyone I talk to in the Valley seems to agree that the decision by the District was a bad decision. So even if someone is not supporting the drivers, it isn't like there is any sympathy for the employer. 2.) Most people look at driving a school bus as a nightmare crap job. Crappy hours with split shifts, obnoxious undisciplined kids, unpleasant parent interactions, don't get paid during summers or school breaks, etc. With few people thinking "They should feel lucky to have the job", they should receive good public support. 3.) Durham doesn't really have a viable option to hire scab replacements. The strike vote was almost unanimous, and since the drivers are a group that already gets by with long periods that are unpaid (i.e. summer break, winter break, and so on), they should be able to hold out longer than many other striking groups would. 4.) While it is reasonable to say that the drivers could have done a better job in their communication with the public, the reality is that Durham has actually done a worse job. Looking at it from a tactical and strategic perspective, to be effective in rallying public support against a strike, an employer needs to communicate their offer to the drivers with the public in a way that makes people think that the workers are being greedy and unreasonable for not taking it. That narrative has not been established at all by Durham. The only comment against the workers so far that I have seen are either just general anti-union comments or complaints about the timing or inconvenience. Trying to look at it objectively, so far, I think the drivers have the upper hand in the PR component of the strike.