It's 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and St. John bus driver Denise Thomas is rolling up the road with a full load just collected at the Cruz Bay dock.
It's also the morning after 62 Vitran public transit workers throughout the territory heard a discouraging word from Labor Commissioner Sonia Jacobs-Dow.
Dow had been invited to testify at Monday night's hearing before the Senate Labor and Veterans Affairs Committee, which was looking into the looming layoffs of half the Vitran staff. Although she did not appear, she did send a letter to committee chair Roosevelt David saying she had just that day received a list of the names of transit workers to be processed for layoff.
Thomas, a Vitran St. John driver since public transit service began on an experimental basis on the island in 1997, is one of those scheduled for layoff come Thursday. So are all of the other St. John employees, except for island operations manager Donna Roberts.
That's because they have only two or three years on the job, while Vitran workers on St. Thomas and St. Croix have much greater seniority. The unions that represent the employees have a last-in, first-out clause on layoffs in their contracts with the Public Works Department, under which Vitran falls.
The planned workforce reduction is at the direction of the Turnbull administration as a cost-cutting measure. The 62 employees to be laid off amount to half of the Vitran staff. Along with the cuts in personnel, bus service is to be curtailed on all three islands, with some routes eliminated and hours of operation cut back. Union leaders said the remaining positions on St. John would be offered to St. Thomas employees with seniority, provided that they relocate to St. John. St. Thomas workers have indicated they do not want to move to St. John, nor do they want to displace their fellow workers there.
Public bus service, ironically, has proven to be more popular on St. John than on the larger islands, with the highest ridership in terms of average numbers of people on a bus run.
Roberts said the St. John cuts in service will most affect "senior citizens, the disabled and our poor working mothers. That is who catches the bus."
On the 10:25 Tuesday from Cruz Bay to Salt Pond, riders said they didn't want to lose a service they had come to rely on.
"This is something we need here," said Glen "Killer" Miller, traveling with his family to his home at the end of the line. "Most of the family use it, including my sister, who goes to work on the boat every day." He added, "I remember the time I couldn't even get out to Coral Bay."
Seniors Verneice Matthias and Genevieve Marsh said St. John Vitran service has made their lives easier. "Senior citizens who can't ride themselves would miss it the most," Marsh said.
Matthias said she signed up for the special senior-citizen transit fare when she came home from a visit to the U.S. mainland. Less-frequent service than what is available now, she said, would leave her trying to catch a ride from passing motorists. "It's ridiculous," she said.
The compact coaches that run the country route are even social centers of a sort — places where locals and tourists mingle on St. John in close, yet comfortable, quarters.
One of the visitors aboard the 10:25 was Chrissi Serini, who said she once lived on St. John and was back to see friends after having moved to St. Croix. When she lived on-island, she said, she used the public transit service frequently. "And now that I'm visiting, I need it," she added.
In Serini's view, "I think they could afford to cut it a little on St. Thomas and St. Croix, but they need to keep it on St. John. People can't get to work without it."
