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It’s important for the Bloomberg administration to blame unionized workers for absolutely everything at absolutely every opportunity. Otherwise, people might start to think “accountability” applies to others. Like the mayor or Walcott, for example.

A decoy for what?  

This seems pretty straightforward (assuming the quotes in the story are accurate):

1. The union, in its negotiations with the city, threatened to strike.  (See quote from Local 1181 president.)

2. The Mayor felt that he had to prepare the system for the potential of a strike, given that the union president threatened a strike.

3. People who dislike Bloomberg react as if he did something wrong by preparing people for the possibility of a strike.  Of course, if he didn’t do this and there was a strike, you can guess what those same people would say.

If the quote from Cordiello is accurate, I’m not sure how GS could report the quotes from people like Sullivan without explaining how they fit together with the union admission of a threat to strike. 

What am I missing here?

There’s not much context here on GS.  You might try reading Sam Pirozzolo’s letter.  The DOE has been working for years with the drivers union to 1) seek legislation to require the seniority provision (EPP) in all contracts 2) fight the bus owners in court when they’ve challenged the provision and 3) support the union’s position by renewing contracts rather then putting them to bid.  All this time, actually years, the union had always threatened to strike if the seniority was taken away.   So it wasn’t a new development and it certainly wasn’t imminent.  In fact, the DOE didn’t issue the RFP for the contract lacking the EPP until hours after the press conference.

The mayor and chancellor should have informed parents that they were parting company with the union and that the union’s response to loss of seniority may trigger a strike at some point.  But to say a strike was imminent when they knew it wasn’t was irresponsible.  Consider for a minute if you were a mom with a special needs child.  Would you want to be told on Friday that a strike was imminent? 

I saw all the DOE players Thursday night.  No one said boo about their intention to release the RFP the next day, hold their press conference or launch 150K robo calls.  Why not?  Because they wanted the maximum shock effect they could get by misleading the public into thinking the union had abruptly threatened a strike.

Sam picked up the phone to get the real story and did everything he can to get that out to parents.  I did what could to help him, including talking to a very uninformed Geoff Decker.   If you want to take cheap shots at us, fine.  But maybe you could try looking at the public schools from the perspective of parents seeking to get their kids educated rather than as a wealthy hedge fund guy looking to advance a privatization agenda.

You know one of these days, Bloomberg and Walcott, will really have a point and then no one will believe them, like the boy who cried wolf.  They have obviously lost all credibility with teachers and parents.  Sad but true.

“Sam picked up the phone to get the real story and did everything he can to get that out to parents.”

Sam picked up the phone to get an Amalgamated Transit Union press release, and that’s what he passed on to parents.  According to him, Bloomberg’s motivation in publicizing a potential strike is “all about stealing money from the hard working citizens of NYC.”  By “citizens of NYC,” Pirozzolo means the members of Local 1181.  Pirozzolo counsels Bloomberg to instead “put his hands into the pockets of his own poorly run city agencies like the Department of Education,” and suggests that “[m]aybe he could eliminate some of the no bid and exploding contracts that plague our system and steal money from our classrooms.”  Yet the bus contract renewals that the City’s been rubber-stamping for the last 30 years are a prime example–perhaps the single best example–of the cost that no-bid contracts have on the classroom.  And the City’s complicity in this anti-competitive scheme for all this time exemplifies the bad decision-making in the DOE that Pirozzolo purports to decry.   It’s even more difficult to swallow in light of the long history of corruption in Local 1181.  And it should raise red flags about corruption in the DOE itself.  As you note, the City actually endorsed the contract terms that it’s now backing away from, and when the City got sued, its lawyers had the temerity to stand before the NY Court of Appeals and defend the contract on the basis that it was necessary to avoid a strike.  This was an outrageous argument, and thankfully, the Court would have none of it:

Appellants fail to refute the facially anticompetitive features of the EPPs, which tend to invite cost-inflation and discourage new bidders from attempting to compete with the long-term contract holders.   As the Appellate Division noted, “[t]he EPP provisions at issue raise the prospect that a vendor will be required to assume a competing contractor’s labor costs, requiring that the vendor’s bid reflect not only the known expense of compensating its own employees but also the unknown and potentially much greater expense of compensating a competitor’s employees” (71 AD3d at 134).   Even if a new bidder can ascertain the pay scale of the existing contractor, the bidder does not know how many of the predecessor’s employees will need to be retained or the salaries of the individual employees, which vary by seniority and other factors.   In these circumstances, prudent bidders might inflate their bids to cover the contingency of having to pay unspecified salaries for a large number of a predecessor’s workforce, and the small-scale operations that currently hold the Pre–K/EI contracts might avoid the contest altogether for fear of losing the gamble.

A brief look at the history of New York City’s public busing contracts since 1979 suggests that, in practice, the EPPs have had anticompetitive and cost-inflating effects.   The existence of EPPs has resulted in the School Age transportation contracts being performed by the same companies with roughly the same employees, year after year.   By contrast, Pre–K/EI transportation, which lacks EPPs, has proceeded with competitive bidding by a variety of small-scale companies, without serious reports of corruption or labor disruption, and without threats from the unions to strike or pressure to introduce EPPs. In short, the introduction of EPPs to the Pre–K/EI bid specifications might eliminate the cost-saving, pro-competition advantages Pre–K/EI busing has enjoyed and would likely introduce the same problems of favoritism and monopolization of the market by large contractors that has beset the School Age contracts.