I get it, it cost money and it sunk your profits for the year. And driving a bus, while it needs some skills, is not a hard trade to teach, so the company owners thought they would be fine.

But the effect of this pandemic on the laborer class is huge. Most of them think that they were nothing but a cog at best, and something to be exploited by the capital at worst. Working for a company, you are expected to earn less, but to have work security. Some (most?) of them will work for themselves now, whether its hairdressers or plumbers.

Online engineering classes during the pandemic were sky-high. My brother was a sound technician, working for event and sometime TV. After the lay-off during the pandemic, he taught himself some code. Most of his ex-coworkers are now working for themselves and are way more expensive than they use to be for companies hiring them, only on temp contracts. Also, they now work less hours, so not only the costs for TV production/event recording are way higher, a small labor shortage is growing in a trade where most people couldn't find a job easily, and were forced to do pro-bono work to build their CVs.