By Doug Cunningham

The Teamsters rallied in Illinois on Monday calling on the world’s largest private school bus company to stay neutral in a union organizing effort. First Student is merging with Laidlaw and will take over most school bus operations in the U.S. The Teamsters Kim Keller says First Student is anti-union and school bus drivers need a union to raise their standards of living.

[Kim Keller]: “Virtually nobody has health insurance, the pay is low. In most cases they don’t even get paid sick days.”

There are about 12,000 Teamster school bus drivers now and efforts are underway to organize thousands more.

[Keller 2]: "It's just completely outrageous that a U.K. based company, who's U.K based workers are fully unionized , here in the U.S. is so abusive to workers when they try to exercise the freedom. And we need to
not tolerate it as a society."