With contract talks set for next month, a small group of Vineyard Transit Authority bus drivers and union officials staged an informational picket Saturday morning at Five Corners, advocating for better pay and working conditions.

“We’re trying to let the public know that the VTA needs to step up and improve their operation,” said Bruce Hamilton, an international vice-president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, who traveled to the Island for the protest.

The drivers are employed by Transit Connection Inc., a contractor which manages drivers for the VTA.

Drivers voted to join the transit union in 2015, but contract talks have been delayed by legal disputes which ended this month. Both sides are due to come to the bargaining table in September.

“This has been three years,” said Richard Townes, a full-time driver who helped organize the union.

Part-time driver Petar Petyoshin said he came to the protest to support the union and called for better pay.

“Better standard of life,” he said. “I work three jobs and I’m struggling. People that drive potato trucks make more money than us, driving 50 people with all that responsibility.”

Also on Saturday, Sen. Edward Markey was due to make a stop a the VTA office on the Vineyard to formally announce a $1.75 million federal grant that will go toward the purchase of clean, zero-emission buses for the regional transit authority.