Facebook bus drivers have had enough, vote to unionize
Drivers of Facebook Inc.’s Silicon Valley shuttle service told the company they had enough of long hours and low wages. On Wednesday they voted 43-28 in favor of joining the local chapter of the Teamsters union.
The drivers work for Loop Transportation, a shuttle-bus service that drives Facebook’s employees from San Francisco and surrounding areas to the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.
In addition to low wages, the drivers complain that the company requires them to work 16-hour split shifts with up to six hours of unpaid time in between.
“When I leave the house at 5:30 each morning for my morning route, my kids are asleep,” Jimmy Maerina, a Loop driver, told the Teamsters union. “And by the time I make it home around 9, they are getting ready to turn in for the night. I miss family dinners, helping with homework – all the little things that a family is supposed to do together.”
Cliff Doi, another loop driver, said that he was losing accumulated vacation time because the company could never find people to cover his route when he wanted to take a day off.
Doi said: “We can’t continue 16-hour days, having drivers sleeping in the cold in their cars while we wait five hours to be able to start our next shift. It’s inhumane.”
Bay Area division
Many Bay Area residents are finding they can no longer afford the rapidly increasing cost of living caused by the booming technology industry. Most are forced to move further from the city, often having to commute long distances to find homes they can afford.
Because of this, the shuttle services of technology companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple Inc. have come to symbolize this growing wealth disparity.
In 2013, groups of San Francisco residents began protesting Google’s bus routes in the city, accusing the company of abusing the city’s infrastructure by using public bus stops, which they said causes delays and congestion.
Last month in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Teamsters union wrote:
This is reminiscent of a time when noblemen were driven around in their coaches by their servants. Frankly, little has changed.
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