Facebook's Bus Drivers Seek Union
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Jeff Leonoudakis, president of Facebook’s shuttle bus contractor, Loop Transportation, said many Facebook drivers earned $18 to $20 an hour.
> “We believe that we take really good care of our drivers,” Mr. Leonoudakis said. “They’re the heart of our company. Without them, we can’t provide service to our customers.”
> He also said Loop provided a generous medical and dental insurance plan.
> “We pay overtime, which most of our competitors do not pay,” Mr. Leonoudakis added, noting that the company provided vacations, sick leave and holiday pay.
> “In keeping with the fact that we provide this high level of wages and benefits to our drivers, I don’t think the union is necessary in this case,” he said.
> Mr. Leonoudakis acknowledged that the split shifts were a strain for drivers.
> “The split shift is a necessity — that’s what our customers are asking for,” he said. “We are trying to make the conditions as pleasant and comfortable as we can.”
> He added, “I don’t have an answer for” the split-shift problem. “I don’t think anyone in the industry does.”
The drivers are well compensated, have benefits, and are treated well. The only problem is that the job requires a split shift, but not much can be done about that. The company's already having a hard time being competitive with contracts - putting 2 drivers per shift would probably make the company non-competitive for contracts.
The job has a clear downside, but that's just how it is and the company tries to make it as comfortable for the employees as it can.
If it's really a problem for the employees, isn't that where the free labor market would allow them to quit their job and look for something more in tune with their preferences?
I'm looking forward to replies to my comment because I'm having a hard time seeing the magical cure here. There's a problem (transporting employees requires drivers), a company emerges to solve it, and compensates employees at a value more or less determined by what the job is worth ($20 an hour, which is roughly between a job at McDonald's making burgers ($10/hour) and a job as a middle class white collar worker ($30/hour)).
Realistically, what can be done better here in the short term? What is the union going to bring to this economic conundrum?
When your boss tells you that you have to do something, you can text your Rep and ask them. It sounds simple but it is really incredible peace of mind to have. They might say "I know it stinks but you do", but at least you have that peace of mind knowing that you are working within the bounds of the contract you and your fellow workers agreed to.
So even if these people were willing to work 2 fulltime jobs to cover this issue (an idea so absurd anywhere outside of America we should be ashamed), they can't because of the hours.
1 solution is to hire two sets of drivers (allowing these people to find another part- or full-time job to compensate). Another is to pay them more for the split shift issue (not to mention the large quality of life impact from the schedule).
This is _not_ an ideal job for anybody.
So don't live there!
It's not like there isn't a huge country here.
If people go take jobs elsewhere, the price people are willing to pay to get people to take these jobs here will go up.
If not there is a glut of people willing to take these jobs at almost any price, in which case, honestly, you can't solve this problem (and it is likely we will, in the not too distant future, soon have too many people for all possible jobs that people are needed for)
This idea that people have a magical right to simultaneously live wherever they want, and get paid enough to live comfortably there is somewhat ridiculous and impossible to fulfill. There will always be places that are more expensive due to demand. It's not like this is the first time in history (even of the US!) this has ever happened. What happens is people go instead where they can afford to live. Then either pay goes up to attract people to the high demand area, or it becomes less in demand.
If i could not afford to live in the bay area with what the bay area was willing to pay me, i would move somewhere cheaper.
There are plenty of jobs in the US that are ready for the taking, pay reasonable rates, and are in places that are affordable. People often just consider themselves too good to take them.
let's replace "Bay Area" with something else with limited land: "Hawaii".
Imagine Hawaii is the next place everyone wants to live.
A billion people want to live there in fact (choose any number that makes you comfortable believing it's not simply a "build more housing units" problem), some who have already been there a long time, some who haven't.
This drives the cost of living up. Some people now can't afford to live there. Some of these folks have been there a long time. Some of them have not.
What solution is there to this problem other than "somebody doesn't get to live in Hawaii"?
My hope is that this becomes less and less true as people become more mobile. Imagine if you could just teleport to a political jurisdiction that is more aligned with your opinions. Suddenly, the penalty for not understanding economics could be very high.
One notable difference (you can see it in this thread) is that people assume economists are somehow different from other academics. That academics in general can be trusted, but economists are sellouts. What they miss is that there is no significant difference between Economics as a field, and other fields. They get paid slightly more, but otherwise the journals, professional organizations, tenure committees, etc. are exactly the same. There is literally no point where the capitalist comes along with bags of money for his obedient intellectual servants.
The real reason people don't accept the mainstream is that it is very dismal. It says that your revealed preference proves that you value a cup of coffee in every morning over the life of an African (since you could donate that money to life saving charities). It says that inequality can't be fully ironed out because some people are more productive than others. It says that there is no way to shuffle around interest rates, bank accounts, etc. and make everyone better off. It says that there is no easy way to make the world better, because the free market has already maxed out the easy gains.
Personally, I think that the best way to encourage people to be more open to the mainstream, is to tell the other side of the store. Economics is also uplifting. It says that when you work for a company, you are creating value, and that that value can and does help people other than yourself (through the tax system). I also believe that tech has very large positive externalities (especially once you understand that taking people's jobs isn't an externality). Finally, it enables people to embrace the positive, self-affirming aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy, without going to extremes. I do feel guilty that I don't do more for the people who are worst off. But at least I can enjoy my money, and my life, without feeling guilty that I'm driving some artist out of the current trendy area.
Free Markets are only efficient with perfect information, fluidity, and lots of jobs (Necessary but not sufficient). Labor markets are almost never as fluid or with enough supply to make them efficient in the way people seem to imply.
Misapplying economic theories has led to so much misinformed political thought in the past century I almost wish we stop talking about supply and demand in schools (joking, but only slightly).
However, these inefficiencies do not explain why Facebook bus drivers make so little. Classical economics is sufficient for that.
You cannot simply point to frictions as a get-out-of-jail-free card from classical economics.
In what sense? Monetarily, i don't believe you. Emotionally, sure.
But that doesn't imply that Facebook is forcing people to move cities. Facebook isn't altering the labor market by employing drivers at market rates.
I hope you'll agree that the frictions from moving arise from changes in cost of living (or in the labor market, which doesn't appear to be changing). If the change in the housing market is gradual enough, the frictions need not be very significant, since they are amortized over a longer period of time.
I actually don't believe free markets are particularly efficient, and labor markets certainly aren't.
But I also don't believe you can magically provide a way to make it feasible for everyone to stay exactly where they are, for as long as they like, regardless of job market, housing, etc.
At a base level, as you can see in a lot of the replies, it comes down to "people believe that if they've been somewhere long enough, they now have a right to stay there as long as they like, and anything else is harsh and mean".
Even if i thought this was right, I doubt you can find an economic model that allows this to happen, and can survive long term (and as evidence i offer that, in the history of civilization, nobody has accomplished this).
If you can, great! I'd love for it to be the case that people can always afford to live where they like, no matter what.
>Even if i thought this was right, I doubt you can find an economic model that allows this to happen, and can survive long term (and as evidence i offer that, in the history of civilization, nobody has accomplished this).
Insurance against changes in housing prices might let people avoid the effects of gentrification much longer. Imagine a bond that pays the difference between the current average rental rate and some "strike price" $X (when this difference is positive).
That's pretty harsh and selfish outlook about the lives and welfare of working families who will never see anywhere near the six figure salaries being earned by FB, Google et al engineers.
Possible alternative to unionizing every low-wage job: lobby the city to remove barriers to building additional housing, so fewer people will need to move.
FWIW: I'm as left wing as they come. Really.
I think you mistake my opinion that "folks should move to where they can afford to live" with a lack of empathy. I actually have very strong empathy for folks in this kind of situation (having had family members in it myself!)
I just don't see a viable alternative here that actually works long term.
Also
"When people move they lose the support network of their friends and family and community."
This is complete and utter bullshit in most cases. It's simply rhetoric with no support. Especially in this day and age of easily available instant communication and social media.
(For reference: I have had severely depressed people in my family who i have supported through their depression, so i actually have some experience in this area. )
"In many ways it's just about the worst thing a person can do for their economic future."
Really? You should probably tell this to all the people who don't end up living near their parents after college ...
Seriously though, you do not offer any evidence of this assertion at all, and all available data i've seen points to the opposite. My ex-wife was the first of her many-generation family to leave the area they lived in. First to go to college. Family pushed her very hard to relocate back to the same area after college. But if she had, that would have been the worst thing she could have done for economic future. Instead she moved somewhere with a better job market for her skill set, and saved money.
Meanwhile, other folks in her family who stayed behind where they couldn't afford to, and where good-paying jobs are hard to get, are now having serious trouble making ends meet. Family can only help you so much here.
And if so, please explain why I, having no family in SF, should be given less consideration than someone who grew up there (possibly several generations). There shouldn't be any interstate barriers (and even if there were - assume I grew up in San Diego. Now what?)
You do realize you live where you do solely because this has happened in the past, right?
"That's pretty harsh and selfish outlook about the lives and welfare of working families who will never see anywhere near the six figure salaries being earned by FB, Google et al engineers."
I do not consider it a harsh and selfish outlook that people should try to live where they can make ends meet. My parents did it. My great great grandparents did it too.
I did it myself. People move over time. Some generation in your family moved for exactly this reason. Probably many.
There is literally no way everyone in the world can afford to live in the same area. It is not an viable proposition.
The fact that people before you lived somewhere gives you no more right than the next guy to live there.
You seem to be implicitly assuming that the corporation will fight for their position, and that there is nothing wrong with that. When workers do the same suddenly you are left in shock and disgust. Why is that?
If Facebook wants to hire cheaper bus drivers, then they should just relocate to a cheaper area, right?
If they couldn't find them, or were unable to do so by laws (e.g. minimum wage), then - yes, they should. And in fact many companies move as a result of regulations or a talent pool that becomes too expensive.
What exactly is your argument? That the drivers are right? (I don't have an opinion) That the fight is legitimate? (Yes, the fight is legitimate, but it is also legitimate for facebook to say "forget it, we'll get someone else to drive our buses". You can only afford to fight if you can afford to lose)
Of course I have. It hasn't made actual sense for a very long time, however.
"You seem to be implicitly assuming that the corporation will fight for their position, and that there is nothing wrong with that. When workers do the same suddenly you are left in shock and disgust. Why is that?"
Because the corporation is already competing for talent in the other direction (very much so in fact!), but when it's the workers that need to compete, their answer is to complain that their is competition?
"If Facebook wants to hire cheaper bus drivers, then they should just relocate to a cheaper area, right?"
Sure, this is a viable alternative to me as well. Companies often do move when it becomes economically infeasible to stay where they are.
Sure it'd be easier to suggest they get work closer to home but real life doesn't work out that way.
Imagine someone hired you for a job where they wanted you 10 minutes out of every 20--10 minutes working, 10 minutes off, repeat. You might have a day where you clock 6 hours, but it would essentially be a 12-hour day at a job with a lot of stops and starts. Whatever rate they claimed to pay you would be inflated by two because they were only paying you for half of your time.
I'm guessing something that granular is illegal, but the split shift acts similarly; there's a big difference between working a 9-hour day straight (say with one 45-min meal break) than working a 9-hour day with a 6-hour gap in the middle, so the latter should be more highly compensated.
And so it's not necessarily an economic conundrum. There's no magical market law that says there is no bus-driving labor that could be worth more than $20 per active hour driving. Bus drivers want better compensation (or at least accommodations that make the gaps more useful to them, such as bunk beds). Facebook is surely willing to pay some amount more than they are now to continue the bus service (evidence: increased costs such as SF's new pickup fee have not stopped bus service from growing). So Facebook could pay more due to increased driver compensation or accommodation cost, the drivers could in turn be paid more or be better accommodated, and everyone would be getting more out of the economic deal than they're putting in.
The union would do what unions always do--shift some of the economic surplus that the company is currently enjoying (paying less for the bus service than the value it provides) to the workers.
One thing worth mentioning here: if prices are determined by the free market they can serve as a valuable signal to increase or decrease supply in response to demand. It may well be that in the future these bus drivers could serve a more useful purpose elsewhere in society, but the signal to do that would be dampened by artificially high wages to bus drivers. Price signals are the reason our society is relatively efficient compared to, say, the Soviet Union.
In conclusion, I think OP is right, if these bus drivers don't like the compensation they're getting they should look for work somewhere else, just like the rest of us.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/InformationandPrices.html
Well, Facebook can go and relocate their workers and facilities to places with a lower standard of living and less necessity for private transportation services, right?
It works both ways.
Bullshit, try going to economies that have suffered periods of extended unemployed labor to see how that impacts 5 and 10 years down the line.
Employment is most certainly a social issue and as such is well within the bounds of reasonable regulations, much more so than any commodity.
They already do.
Facebook has offices in London, New York, Tel-Aviv and (I would assume) other cities as well; it is not because they like the accents - it is because they exhausted their available CA talent pool AT THE PRICE THEY ARE WILLING TO PAY, and therefore have to tap other pools.
I don't understand your argument.
If facebook is paying wages that are too low, they will not find employees.
While I definitely agree with the sentiment that jobs should provide a living wage, and I suspect that driving a bus for facebook might not provide that - I think singling out companies that are doing well financially (like Facebook and Google) and asking them to increase pay is hypocritical. If the pay needs to be higher, that should be codified by law.
I would oppose a protest asking Bill Gates (whom I do not particularly like, btw) to pay more at the grocery store for same services as anyone else just because he can, regardless of whether the person at the register is making a living wage or not. And facebook paying drivers more is similar.
Facebook don't want Muni buses and Muni uus drivers, they want exclusive buses and that creates extra costs which they need to pay for. Here the extra costs come from exclusivity and split shifts.
They are happy to pay for the extra costs - but not more than they need to. Now, the question is "how much do they need to pay for that" - and historically, this answer is reached by matching supply and demand subject to regulations.
The bus drivers might want to increase the price (by reducing supply - that is, in fact, a union's leverage). Facebook might counter by hiring a different bus company.
If the wage is not livable, they will not find drivers because those drivers need to eat. If the wage is livable and there are willing employees - why should they pay more? "Because they can" is an answer I personally find unacceptable.
This collective bargaining is called a union.
What is your problem with a group of people choosing to organize this way?
This collective bargaining is called price-fixing.*
This isn't a clear-cut issue of rights that can be settled on principle. Workers have been given the right to collectively fix prices through unions not because it's a fundamental freedom, but because it has been recognised that employees negotiate from a position of relative weakness to their employer.
I think it boils down to this. The union's position is not thoroughly explained, while the author seems to have very good access to the contracting company's CEO.
That the CEO has poor opinion of union's request and present facts in a positive light for his company is a given. Now we need the other side's arguments explained first hand.
A free labor market would certainly allow workers to unionize to leverage their power and pursue their own capitalist goals by whatever means the market allows them. A free labor market should recognize the workers as important actors in that market. I'm not sure why unions seem like such an appalling idea to capitalist idealists.
For the same reason capitalism was named "capitalism" by its critics (a name later adopted by its supporters) -- because it is a system in which society is ordered to serve the interests of capitalists first and foremost.
It is quite easy to be a principled proponent of free markets, no matter who they benefit in a particular instance. It is quite a stretch to say that anyone who claims to adhere to this principle is really an agent of the capitalists.
Yeah, if only they didn't compete with each other ...
"“That hampers their ability to pay these workers decently,” Mr. Aloise said, “and that keeps pulling the common denominator down.”"
I'm not even sure what he's suggesting?
Company A and B make bids based partly on what they pay their drivers.
Company A wins. Company B lowers their pay in order to be more competitive. Company B wins the next bid. Company A lowers pay to be competitive.
I think that's what he's saying. I'm not sure how true it is.
Competitive tendering does have some flaws but I'm not sure that's one of them.
So uh, they lower their price to compete and to what the market will bear. Isn't that how it is supposed to work?
If it isn't enough to live on, people will do something that lets them live (In theory. In practice, people just complain about the high cost of living wherever they are, instead of moving to places where there are jobs available and lower cost of living)
Their are consequences to this choice. The consequence in this case is "it is hard to find a job that pays well enoguh to live there".
"You can't just turn your face and say, "Hey this is how the market works. Deal with it"."
I agree this is true. However, literally not a single person in this thread has given a solution to this problem that works over the long term.
"Because when the number of people disgruntled with this system reaches a certain point, bad things will happen."
Yes, revolutions happen. This does not generate a long term stable situation where everyone can live where they want either :)
(in fact, revolutions tend to redistribute land, and often people who were living in places the longest get kicked out!)
"Bad things" just kind of proves the point. If someone had come up with a viable solution, these bad things would never happen. But they happen in places all the time. They effectively reset the clock on some problem, though they often have some nasty side-effects.
These private buses want a better than the market experience, but don't want to pay enough to cover the costs involved.
In the context of immensely rich companies who have extravegant perks it seems weird for them to be nickle and diming on this one perk.
Driving buses is very stressful - so much so that it reduces length of life. Driving the price down to what the market (of drivers) will bear leaves you with sub-optimal drivers.
Cost of Living is definitely skewed in some cities - london, SF, etc. Do you really want your bus driver to have a one hour commute before they start work? Other low paid jobs - cleaners, store clerks, teachers, low rank nurses and care assistants - these people are all needed by the city but can't afford to either live in the city nor live outisde it and commute in. Being a cleaner is probably lousy, but being a cleaner with a two hour commute to get to your minimum wage job must really suck.
Your answer touches on the concept of people as "rational economic actors" but that doesn't happen in the real world, just like we don't have spherical cows in the fields. People have many reasons for staying at a sub-optimal location or in a sub-optimal job and using those sub-optimalities to screw them out of a bit more money is
So of course no union will say it out loud but the economic effect of their policy is to shut out the less skilled workers to artificially benefit the more skilled workers.
Or to raise prices for FB and co. The lever works both ways.
The union sucks worker's pay (not optional btw in most places, even if you don't want it). They don't help anyone, only spur in-fighting. Argue for and provide yearly wage increases regardless of work performance (even during years when the company takes massive losses due to market turndown).
How about we check and see how much the union rep's are taking home per year? Probably an awful lot more than the workers they are "representing" (not to mention it's the worker's money the rep is pocketing). It's simply a scheme now-days.
More anecdotal evidence? How about the Raley's Supermarket worker union? I've known several people who have worked there in different capacities. Raley's, the company, will terminate an individual's employment if they do not agree with, sign up with, and pay mandatory dues to the worker union. Why? Well that's because that is the agreement the worker's union strong-armed the management union into years ago (probably because it means any non-mgnt employee now is obligated to pay a portion of their hard earned paycheck directly to the union). What does the Raley's worker union fight for and represent their members for? Better hours? Nope. Better pay? Yep, yearly mandatory increases regardless of performance, and regardless of how the company as-a-whole is doing.
More anecdotal evidence! How about the forced shutdown of Hostess which left 30,000 workers without any job, pension or benefits! The Teamsters (the Teamsters!) at least had the sense to strike a deal with Hostess mgmt, but the Baker's union did not care about anything other than more money (even though Hostess was on the verge of bankruptcy!). Well, without a deal to freeze all pay increases for two measly years, Hostess was left with no choice but to close up shop and leave 30,000 employees out in the cold. Fat lot of good the unions did here.
Ya, unions are a relic of the past. Sorry, no sane person will work 20 hours a day for $0.50 an hour, even without a union "representing them". There is no point to unions anymore, especially in a competitive marketplace. Competition will always trump standardization.
Am I the only one who find it quite sick that these large firms use private buses when they could be getting together to fix/improve what is broken?
The city of Lima, Peru, has a system of informal buses which go through the city in different routes, and charge an extremely low price.
On the surface, it works well, but it suffers a tremendous problem of lack of coordination which leads to huge systemic inefficiencies.
The government of Lima is fighting back by improving the public transport infrastructure, but it's a project that will take decades.
The cities, counties, and state should already be improving the infrastructure with the revenue they have.
I don't think there is a law that forbids privately owned public transportation. They may need to be licences and follow certain laws but that should not stop someone from "disrupting" a broken system.
Let me put it this way: There were (are?) overpasses that were designed to be too low for city buses to pass underneath them.
Improving public transit requires the cooperation of multiple entities. Hiring private buses does not. We do not know, one way or another, if cooperation was attempted.
Half or more of the problem with all bay area public transport is that lots of the peninsula actively likes not having working public transit. I live in Belmont and I'm an active voter. Mayoral / council campaigns here don't outright say "no public transit ever" but if you read between the lines its there. Lots of people move to the peninsula to have their house in the suburbs (turning nimby the second the deed changes names), and public transit or dense housing is not desired.
Of course, bitching about 101 or 280 doesn't stop just because they actively subvert the only way to fix our transportation fiasco.
I do have a solution, though: it's time to give up on the bay area. I figure I can start a company in Tahoe and draw amazing engineers. Live in Tahoe and get 20 snow-days a year doesn't sell every engineer, but it definitely sells a handful of great ones. That's the idea, anyhow...
[1] http://www.sonic.net/~mly/www.geolith.com/bart/figure1.html
It's quite amazing that these companies provide commuter buses, and that's probably the best way every private company can help the community. Each one of those buses probably takes hundreds of cars off the road, easing traffic and reducing pollution. I don't understand why the media is obsessed with viewing private buses as a symbol of privilege, and not as a practical solution to bay area's commute problem.
A problem with many of the initial transit offset arguments was that they didn't take into account that given the presence of the buses how many people chose to live in communities farther way from their work, when absent the buses, they would have moved closer. This and other externalities.
Regarding "the media is obsessed with viewing private buses as a symbol of privilege" is because it is a symbol of privilege -- Unless you want to make the argument that it's a symbol of disadvantage. Someone who has a personal driver is more privileged than someone taking a private bus than someone taking a private car than someone taking a public bus than some poor chap who has to bike or walk everywhere.
The reason why the media and much of the non-tech public has disdain for the buses is that it creates two cities. One set of people has access to travel means A and B and the second set just has access to B. The last time that sort of forced social sorting was prevalent in the United States was in the 1960's when there were White and Colored water fountains. These are the connotations the general public thinks about consciously or subconsciously.
And honestly I don't see why they shouldn't have a private bus. FB employees worked their asses off their whole life in school and learning to code etc.
Let's stop pretending that people who can't even afford to buy a house are entitled, elite, or nobility.
If the bus drivers are so stubborn to live in the bay, there is plenty of very affordable living spaces (homes, condo's, and the like) all right outside the main city in the suburbs.
Irregardless, let's not all weaponize against a company simply because said company has money and bus drivers don't. $20 an hour is pretty darn good for a relatively low-skilled job.
"Low skilled" is, in this case, in comparison to the population, not some objective absolute. In CA, "driving literacy", which is almost sufficient for piloting said steel contraption, is comparable to real literacy, and I suspect is way above numeracy. Would you consider being able to read or do arithmetics anything other than "low skilled"?
In fact, at the local university (it's a UC, but I won't name it since then you'd know which municipal public transit system I'm using in my anecdotes), student's 21 and up can apply and take a 1 week course, the UC pays for the Class B license test, and then they, a student, gets to drive the UC's "twenty tons of steel" buses around campus and to nearby neighborhoods shuttling students around. (ya, it's as scary as it sounds). I don't know for sure, but I assume more UC's have similar programs.
Yes, this is by definition a low skilled job.
Sometimes companies do need a little bit of a collective nudge to try and work out better working conditions and schedules.
While I think that engineer wages should increase at the expense of corporate margins, Valley engineers do live a life that is comparable or better than life of nobility in the past.
But what you are suggesting isn't just automating away programming, but automating away requirements analysis. And that's not happening any time soon.
[1] http://www.bloom-lang.net/
[2] http://www.chris-granger.com/2014/10/01/beyond-light-table/
There is an upcoming revolution (not only) in the IT sector knocking on the door, comparable(in principle, not in scale) to the aftermath of the big industrial revolution in the late 19/early 20th century. Not only are most of the it-services jobs going to be obsolete(I'm not talking about people facing the customer, although this segment will be affected as well), even many of the "high-level" engineering jobs have an expiration date. Just look at your team, how many "code-pushers" do you have within that team compared to creative folks coming up with new radical(emphasis) ideas. There are "thinkers" and "hands"(and - since the world is never this polarized / clear-cut, some overlap in between - mentioning only so nobody would nit-pick an argument over this). The ratio may vary based on the team/project but "hands" are usually the most in numbers(and this is OK, we do need people that can actually finish a project, can get the work done; this was argued a 1000times here and I agree with most of the conclusions). If you see yourself in the first category(please keep in mind that the term is not a very lucky-chosen one) - there is no reason to be anxious .. well with trade agreements plowing the global economic field 24/7 I'm sure there is no-one on the planet that could do the same job as good as you for far less(well, to be honest, there indeed are people with a combination of skills that you probably would not find anywhere else - hence the "evil-genius" acquisition by google - and you may be in that category).. for everyone else, something to think about.
This process is already gaining momentum in "ES-like" environments - the IT job market is going to change once again and this time it won't be a zero-sum game(even when we widen the scope to the whole economy - we have already passed the point where new emerging industries could compensate the rising efficiency of the old ones).
Now to the notion of class. To have money is not the same as being wealthy. Having a 6fig salary doesn't push you “one class" higher - just imagine what would happen if your skill-set would become obsolete tomorrow. You'd have to start over in a new industry(I will assume that median of the IT crowd is above average on the IQ scala and therefore would not have a problem finding another job*), the house/apartment you could barely afford is now over your budget and since most of your peers have the same problem, the housing market normalizes; you'd loose even more money if you'd want to sell it and move to a cheaper area(now throw-in a mortgage and you are set for years). Being upper-class meant that you had enough diversified "income-producing" assets to overcome such changes without loosing your living standard(I'd say even more important was/is the "upper-class" social network you were/are a part of, which handles the diversification even better and represents a valuable safety net on its own). How many peers owning stocks from companies across the industry, real-estate(fe an office building on the main street in some "emerging" town), with at least some connections to leaders of other industries / politics etc do you know?
So, TL;DR A 6figure salary doesn't make you jump to a higher "class", it doesn't even make you "wealthy", it just widens your economical horizon / makes you a little more free(the money-to-freedom function is not linear, nor is the money-to-wealth func)
We all are facing the same, unavoidable employment crisis as those bus drivers mentioned above.
+ I fully agree with sschueller's comment - why not invest in public transport and give something back to the community German Mittelstand-like instead?