Kathy Earley is not the type of person who's comfortable standing up and talking to a large group in public. But when her employer, the Jefferson County (Ala.) public schools, proposed cutting almost $500,000 in pay from Earley and her fellow school bus drivers--some $400 a month from her paycheck alone--Earley overcame her fears and addressed the county school board.

"I wasn't just going to lie down and let them take money away from us," says Earley, noting that a couple of her supervisors were at the meeting--looking none too pleased with her. After the board heard from two other drivers and it came time to vote on whether to endorse the superintendent's cuts aimed at bus drivers, they unanimously voted no. The successful grassroots campaign among the bus drivers was impressive in its own right but even more so in a district where the school board meets during the day so most school employees can't attend their meetings and where there is little tradition of school groups challenging the authority of the administration and school board.

At stake for the more than 400 bus drivers in the district were two sources of money beyond their regular salaries: pay for extra routes they run during the day (usually transporting special need and vocational students) and bonuses for going the entire year without an accident or ticket. During its budget deliberations, the district proposed eliminating both, which totaled $478,000.

"When we found out the board was going to cut half a million dollars from the pockets of bus drivers, we were able to mobilize them and get them involved," says Vi Parramore, president of the Jefferson County Federation of Teachers. "The key was the involvement of people who know their jobs a lot better than I do." The drivers wrote personal letters and made phone calls to board members, wore buttons and stickers and packed the board meeting at which Earley and the other drivers testified. "The board members were totally clueless about what we do" on the routes with the special education students, Earley said.

Even though the goal of the campaign was not to recruit new members, membership cards started flooding the local when school employees saw how successful the bus drivers had been with the AFT local's help. The federation has signed up almost 500 new members since July, a membership increase of almost 50 percent. "I think they've seen that the AFT cares about employees who are at the low end of the pay scale and they think, 'Hey, I'm joining an organization that works for its members,'" Parramore says.

Earley says she and her fellow bus drivers aren't afraid to speak up anymore. In fact, she adds, the district "is afraid of AFT now, and I like that. If they start liking us, something is wrong."