Bus driver shortage puts pressure on WSD

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/12/2022 (1055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than a year after admitting it needed an immediate infusion of bus drivers, the Winnipeg School Division is stuck in a hiring drive.

WSD spokeswoman Radean Carter confirmed this week it is currently short eight bus drivers.

“We are actively recruiting for bus drivers and recently held a job fair for bus drivers as part of our ongoing effort to hire more for the division,” Carter said Monday.

WSD has been able to distribute impacted students across buses, making routes longer but also more difficult when drivers call in sick — an ongoing prospect amid a raging respiratory virus season.

“We do have days when transportation for one or more routes is cancelled due to no drivers,” Carter said.

“Our transportation department contacts every parent (and) guardian of students on those routes as early in the morning as possible, and we also post cancelled routes on the winnipegsd.ca website.”

The WSD has 77 bus routes in the city, transporting 1,706 of the division’s 29,522 students to and from respective school each day. There are 102 buses in the WSD’s fleet.

Jeff Traeger, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 832, which represents school bus drivers in the WSD (as well as Virden), said the job vacancy problem started even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s a story that doesn’t go away,” Traeger said. “Getting enough school bus drivers is a challenge.

“Part of the problem is the consistency of hours. People with Class 2 licences can find a lot more consistent hours somewhere else.”

Junior employees have to drive several years before they get more hours than just two in the morning (driving students to school) and two in the afternoon (driving them home), Traeger said.

Even though drivers are paid well in the current three-year agreement — a new driver gets $26.43 per hour, which jumps to $27.02 the second year and $27.07 the third — it’s tough for them to find a job in the hours in between, the union leader said.

“They want to get a second job so they can pay for groceries, but these hours don’t leave too many jobs open for them,” Traeger said. “If you’re only working four hours, than it means you’re really only working for about $11 per hour.”

BJ Langdon, owner of Tony’s Team Transport Inc., which is contracted at times to fill in school bus driver gaps, said all such transport companies are having trouble finding drivers.

“It’s a problem all across North America, not just here,” Langdon said.

“We do what we can to help, but we also lost a few of the older guys who didn’t want to get sick with COVID. There’s been a change in people wanting part-time work. I don’t know what the solution is. It’s a really tough market.

“We’re always on the hunt for drivers. If we had more people, we could take on more work.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca