NYC School Bus Drivers’ Union ATU Local 1811 Calls for Strike on Wednesday

NYC  School Bus Drivers’ Union ATU Local 1811 Calls for Strike on Wednesday

By AL BAKER
Published: January 14, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/nyregion/new-york-city-school-bus-driv...

 
For the first time in more than three decades, New York City’s largest union for school bus drivers plans to strike on Wednesday morning, a move that would affect more than 150,000 students.

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Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

More than 150,000 students would be affected by the strike.

Even before the head of the union, Local 1811 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, delivered the news at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg held his own news conference to denounce the move and say that the city was ready with an array of backup steps to support children and their families.
Among them is a plan to provide MetroCards to affected children who take yellow buses, for as long as the strike might last, as well as to the parents of students in kindergarten through second grade.
Those whose schools are inaccessible by public transportation can get reimbursed for mileage or cabs, the mayor said. Students will get a two-hour reprieve on lateness or be excused altogether for absences caused by a strike disruption without harm to their attendance rolls, he said.
Mr. Bloomberg accused the union of abandoning the students who rely daily on the transportation service.
“The union’s decision to strike has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with job protections that the city legally cannot include in its bus contracts,” he said. “We hope that the union will reconsider its irresponsible and misguided decision to jeopardize our students’ education.”
The union said the decision for its 8,800 drivers and matrons to strike — the first since a 13-week strike in 1979 — was essentially about children’s safety. It argued that the strike was necessary to preserve job protection for the most experienced yellow-bus drivers when transportation vendors who employ them lose city contracts.
Those job-security measures will not be included in the competitive bids that the city is soliciting for 1,100 of its routes, or about a sixth of the total number of routes. The cost of all the city’s routes has mushroomed to $1.1 billion annually from about $100 million a year in 1979.
The strike would affect about 111,000 of the 1.1 million public school students, as well as 41,000 parochial school students. The routes in question, for the new contracts, apply to the transportation of 22,500 children from public and parochial schools in kindergarten through 12th grade who have special needs.
“It’s a protection that’s in there to provide the best quality driver and matron in the City of New York,” Michael Cordiello, the president of Local 1181, said of the measures.
The city maintains that a 2011 state court ruling has legally prohibited it from including the protections in new contracts. But the union disagrees.
“There has never been a court ruling that the employee protection provisions are, in all cases, illegal,” said Richard N. Gilberg, a union lawyer.
Mr. Cordiello said that the strike was an action “we must take,” and that it would start at 6 a.m. Wednesday. He said the mayor could “come and talk to us and end the strike” at any time, and that there were other ways to resolve the issue, including pulling back the bids.
City officials said that, even without the job-security provisions, an array of certifications and qualifications would apply to newly hired bus drivers, including reference letters, criminal history and physical performance checks, and medical examinations.