Thousands of parents are looking for alternate ways to get their children to school in Marlborough on Monday after city school bus drivers went on strike.
Lauren Rojas, whose son Antonio takes the school bus to kindergarten every day, said she drove him to school on her way to work in Lowell and that she supported the bus drivers' efforts.
"As a community, there's been a lot of anxiety about what today was going to look like," she said.
Teamsters' spokesman Jim Marks said drivers and bus monitors are looking for improved pay and for recently reduced hours to be restored. About 40 drivers joined Monday's strike in Marlborough.
“They don’t want to give a contract. They don’t want to take care of these employees,” Marks said of NRT, the bus company. “[Drivers are] sick of being treated like crap."
The bus drivers, part of Teamsters Union Local 170, went on strike Monday after a week of stalled negotiations with NRT. Drivers formed picket lines outside the NRT office in Hudson just a day after bus drivers in nearby Framingham successfully concluded their contract negotiations. School bus drivers in the town of Westborough also remain in contract talks but did not join the Marlborough drivers' strike.
NRT Bus did not respond to GBH News' requests for comment on Monday.
In a statement, Marlborough schools superintendent Mary Murphy said the district had contingency plans in place for the 3,000 students that are transported to and from school each day.
Students within 1.5 miles of the school are expected to walk, while students further must be driven to school by their parents. The plan also included using a small number of buses to transport students from dense neighborhoods to school. Murphy said the district was still able to transport 1,000 students on Monday.
Part of contract dispute involved a proposal that paid drivers of small buses and school vans less than drivers of bigger yellow buses, union members said.
Bus driver Cayla Dodd, who had attended some of the negotiation sessions, said the union offered various compromises but NRT was unwilling to meet them halfway. She said drivers do not want to disappoint the students and families they transport daily, but that cost cutting efforts by NRT management had gone too far.
“We can’t get what we want out of them to make this a job that’s really worth working at and staying at," she said.
