We are now in month nine of the coronavirus pandemic. It has upended life for everyone, and for bus drivers at TriMet, it has been no exception. However, instead of supporting its operators, honoring the essential workers who have kept this system rolling while the world around it has fallen apart, management has thrown an insult of contract at us and forced us to arbitration instead of negotiating in good faith.
The last nine months have been a struggle. I’ve seen things that I never thought I would see, dealt with things I’ve never thought I would have to deal with, planned for things I never thought I would have to plan for. Most days it feels like the bus is the only bit of normalcy rolling through a city that looks like the backdrop for some 1980’s dystopian sci-fi flick, a symbol from a past world when commuters went to work and the streets were busy and filled with life.
However, as we look to the dreaded second wave we have known is coming all summer long, operators have about the same support we’ve had for the last few months: some paper masks, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and some sanitizing wipes. And while those are appreciated, I’m afraid it’s just a matter of weeks or days before frontline workers at TriMet are hit hard like transit workers in New York City and London were this spring.
The other day, I finished a 14.5 hour day driving the 4 and 6 and walked over to the Goose Hollow MAX station to wait for the train back to Merlo to get my car. A customer walked up and talked to me about the fare inspectors he had seen earlier that day. We got to talking and he asked me how often we are tested as TriMet bus drivers. I said never, if we want to get tested, we have to go make our own appointments on our own dime. He was shocked, and backed away slowly from me (even though we were already six feet apart and masked). He said he couldn’t believe there isn’t frequent testing of us.
Considering how many other employers are conducting tests at the workplace, it is shocking how we aren’t tested frequently, especially considering how as operators we could be big vectors in spreading the virus throughout the community. I was even more shocked when I found out that a relative of my wife’s who works at a local private college is tested once every two weeks for working in the office just two days a week!
I think TriMet got lucky in the spring and didn’t have a large number of infected staff because the lockdown stopped the spread and a lack of available testing meant many who may have contracted it had no idea. However this fall it could be brutal. People are back on the bus, and while most are wearing masks, too many aren’t or refuse to or don’t have the mental capacity to wear one.
The past two weeks, I’ve noticed people coughing on the bus, a first since March. After hearing all the coughing on the bus, I have not been shocked by the increase in cases statewide. Once, driving the 2 two weeks ago, I picked up a woman who had a white plastic “patient’s belongings” bag from the hospital. She got on the bus, didn’t put a mask on when I asked her, and started hacking up a storm on the bus. The only other man on the bus, who had just helped me give directions to a blind customer, stood up and said let him off at the next stop; he wasn’t about to catch coronavirus. I made a PA announcement to put on a mask and cover your cough, but she still kept coughing all over the place. I was terrified; I love my job, but no job is worth getting sick and dying over, and my cloth mask and the open windows suddenly didn’t feel like a whole lot of protection.
If TriMet is serious about protecting its operators and protecting the community, it needs to give us better tools to protect us so we can continue to operate during this pandemic.
- No mask no ride. I don’t want to be assaulted, get in an argument, or create unpleasantness on the bus, but it’s absurd that we cannot deny rides to passengers who aren’t wearing a mask. The governor mandates it. The CDC recommends it. Yet TriMet wants us to just suggest to a passenger to wear a mask and if they refuse, just push a button on our computer which just registers the refusal occurring. If a passenger was not following other passenger conduct rules on the bus that created a safety issue, I would pull the bus over and open the doors and give them the option to either follow the rules or get off the bus until they can. That we can’t do this as operators because of masks is absurd and is not protecting the customers who rely on us.
- Give operators N95 masks. (EDITOR’S NOTE: TriMet made an announcement not long after I published this saying they would issue operators N95 masks. Got one last night when I returned to the garage). I know there are supply chain issues and the lack of N95 masks has a lot to do with our national failures in confronting the pandemic and manufacturing than TriMet’s fault. But operators in other cities on bus driver Facebook pages have talked about being issued N95 masks by their employers. We received one mask during the forest fires because of the smoke, and that’s it. Now that the pandemic is back, we should have more masks to protect us and our customers.
- Test us for coronavirus frequently. Bus operators are with people, in the public’s eye all day. If we are on report, or checking in for our work, we can be in a room with dozens of other operators waiting for our work, breathing in all their germs. When we relieve a bus on the road from another operator, we are sitting in a seat and a work area that is covered with their germs. If one of us gets sick with the virus, it’s easy to see how it could spread quickly to other operators and workers, and those operators could spread it to passengers who could take those germs home. Of course, if we all wear masks, we should be OK for the most part, but finding out who has the virus sooner, before symptoms even show, could stop it before it spreads.
Management has put up Heroes Work Here signs everywhere but when it comes to protecting us, to rewarding us for our heroics, they are content to leave the appreciation at the signs. If they truly appreciated us, they would present us with a contract not full of takeaways that eliminate jobs, eliminate the maintenance department at TriMet, and not financially reward us.
The pandemic will eventually strike TriMet and it will be the front line workers, the operators like me, who will bear the brunt of it, not management which has worked from home since March. It’s scary to go to work in the midst of all this, but it would be easier if we had better resources and knew management respected us with a contract that is fair to us. As “heroes,” we should ask for a whole lot more.
