[egypturnash]

Huh, I'm surprised, my initial guess of "pays like shit" wasn't the primary reason - "bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one, with a chaser of "doesn't pay as well as other driving jobs".

[gruez]

>"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one

To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.

[orwin]

To be fair, if they did want those drivers to come back, they shouldn't have laid them off.

I get it, it cost money and it sunk your profits for the year. And driving a bus, while it needs some skills, is not a hard trade to teach, so the company owners thought they would be fine.

But the effect of this pandemic on the laborer class is huge. Most of them think that they were nothing but a cog at best, and something to be exploited by the capital at worst. Working for a company, you are expected to earn less, but to have work security. Some (most?) of them will work for themselves now, whether its hairdressers or plumbers.

Online engineering classes during the pandemic were sky-high. My brother was a sound technician, working for event and sometime TV. After the lay-off during the pandemic, he taught himself some code. Most of his ex-coworkers are now working for themselves and are way more expensive than they use to be for companies hiring them, only on temp contracts. Also, they now work less hours, so not only the costs for TV production/event recording are way higher, a small labor shortage is growing in a trade where most people couldn't find a job easily, and were forced to do pro-bono work to build their CVs.

[gruez]

> To be fair, if they did want those drivers to come back, they shouldn't have laid them off.

How much would it cost to keep the drivers on the payroll? If the drivers are available to be hired, but your business is driven to bankruptcy a few months into the pandemic, that doesn't really improve the situation.

[egypturnash]

Sure can't use any of the $173 million they made in profit last year, though.

[gruez]

They could, but they don't because it's not their responsibility. Likewise, should we shame rich silicon valley knowledge workers because they didn't pay to keep their local restaurants afloat during the pandemic?

[egypturnash]

No, but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier, just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies.

Oh, and we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of money being given to public education. And possibly everyone who votes for them, as well.

[gruez]

>No

Why not? They're private entities too, with plenty of money to keep the neighborhood resturant from having to shut down. Or better yet, pay their babysitter/dog walker even though they don't need their services?

>but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier

I fail to see how this applies for someone working for FAANG.

>just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies.

No, we shouldn't, because that's not their job. There's a clear delineation of what's the private sector's responsibility and what's the governments. I sure as hell don't want my pandemic stimulus checks to depend on whether I happened to work for a well-off company or not.

>we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of money being given to public education

US has above-average per-pupil spending compared to other OECD countries. I doubt money is actually an issue. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/CMD/Figure_3_CMD-fl...

[old_hat]

In Australia we only have school busses for incredibly remote communities. Most kids just take public transport.

Of course for that to work, you have to have a viable public transport system.