Montville — School district employees who drive Montville’s school buses say they’re worried about losing the benefits in their union contract if the school board votes to outsource district transportation to a private company.

Montville is one of about a dozen school districts in Connecticut that employs its own school bus drivers, while most other districts contract with private companies.

For the second time in four years, the Montville school board has solicited bids this winter from the local school transportation companies to compete with the in-house transportation contract.

The board voted unanimously in October to request bids as a way to assess whether the district could save money by selling its buses to a private company. Montville Superintendent Brian Levesque said the district is reviewing four bids from transportations firms that submitted proposals during the bidding period that ended in January.

The school board employs about 35 drivers and three mechanics, who are unionized with the Teamsters Local 493 chapter.

The five-year contract the union signed with the town in 2013 guarantees that if the district hires a private company while the union contract is in effect, that company must offer a job to all the district’s drivers and honor the details of the contract. 

All drivers and mechanics, and their dependents, receive health insurance through Tri-State Health Services & Insurance with no co-payments and group life insurance. They are also eligible for retirement benefits through the state Municipal Employees Retirement System.

But, driver John Coffey said if the district accepts one of the four private bids, their salaries and benefits could be in jeopardy. When the current contract expires on Aug. 31, the union would have to renegotiate a new deal with the private company that may not be as generous.

Coffey said both his wife and sister-in-law drive buses in the district.

“We all went to Montville because of the benefits,” he said.

Coffey said several of the other Montville drivers plan to retire or find another job if the school board votes to sign a contract with a private company — including him and his wife.

“If they go private, they’re just leaving,” he said. “I can go be a delivery driver for Budweiser if I want to.”

Levesque said Monday that because most districts in the area have private transportation contracts, any drivers who decide to leave Montville for another school bus driving job will likely be working for a private company anyway.

"I would hope that ours would stay," he said.

But, if drivers decide to work elsewhere, "I think we would get bus drivers one way or another," he said.

The drivers for Connecticut bus companies like DATTCO and First Student Transportation are unionized in some towns, but not others. Levesque said Monday that it will be up to the school board to decide whether to accept one of the four bids or stay with the in-house busing.

He said if the board chooses to accept a private bid, most of the savings to the district would come from selling the district’s fleet of more than 30 buses and a handful of vans to the company.

m.shanahan@thday.com