School buses were on the road as usual this morning after a strike by drivers was called off Saturday night.
The local teamsters union reached a tentative agreement with Sparksman Transportation after giving their strike notice last Wednesday.
Lance Wallace with the Teamsters says the deal still needs to be voted on.
“About the third week of the month, fourth week of the month, the Sparksman people will be coming in for a vote,” he said, “but we haven’t set that date yet.”
Wallace says it was a long process.
“We worked through the weekend,” he recounted, “and late Saturday we came to a memorandum which is a document that both sides maybe aren’t totally happy with but are willing to recommend to their counterparts.”
He says it’s mostly housekeeping that remains to be done.
“The process right now is the paper shuffle that has been going on all weekend – organizing that, getting a document together for signatures on both sides,” he explained, “then we take that document to our membership, and based on ratification, we have a collective agreement.”
This was the first year the drivers had been unionized, after they joined Teamsters over the summer.
November 13, 2012
