Bluesky

I'm a school bus driver and my boss (the district's transportation director) loves to bitch about how "nobody wants to work" because we have so much trouble finding drivers. Our hourly pay is actually decent (over $30 an hour) and we get benefits including excellent health insurance (the entire reason I do this job) and a small pension down the road. However (and this is why we have so much trouble finding drivers) you usually get only about 4.5 hours a day, and when you start as a driver you're only a substitute and you don't get the benefits until you become a regular route driver - which takes some unknown length of time until somebody retires or dies or tests positive for drugs (which happens) or drives kids around drunk (which also happens). So very few people, even if qualified and experienced as bus drivers, can afford to live for a long time without benefits or an adequate total salary until they have enough seniority to exist reasonably well. I was lucky to become a regular route driver with benefits after only two months as a substitute, but some people wait years.

I'm totally pro-union, but seniority really makes for a strange mindset. I find myself looking at coworkers that I like and respect and pondering what their chances are of getting cancer and dying. Many of them are trumpers (and smokers) and I actively root for them to die.