GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

cooling off chill

January 30, 2013

City turns down school bus drivers union’s offer to pause strike

by Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, at 1:48 pm

Striking bus drivers picketed outside the Department of Education's headquarters at Tweed Courthouse on Monday.

A union proposal to suspend the city’s two-week-old school bus strike temporarily got a swift rejection this week from city officials, who said the plan would block cost-cutting measures for over a year.

The bus drivers union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, called a press conference today to announce that the city had turned down its proposal for a two-to-three month “cooling off” period during which drivers would return to work and the city would not solicit bids for new transportation contracts.

The union called the strike because the city is not including seniority protections for current drivers in the new contracts’ terms.

In a mediation session organized but not attended by the city, union president Michael Cordiello met on Monday with Justice Milton Mollen, who brokered an agreement to end the last bus strike, in 1979, and representatives from several major bus companies.

Cordiello said today that during mediation, he agreed to send drivers and matrons back to work for two to three months if the city would suspend the special education transportation bidding process and negotiate with the union.

But freezing bidding for two months would make it impossible to have new contracts signed by September, delaying new contracts for another school year, according to City Hall spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua. “Postponing the bids would guarantee that the same billion-dollar contracts we have now stay in place next year,” she said.

City officials appear prepare to wait out the strike, which could last through the end of the school year. The Department of Education has revised its strategies for helping families use alternate transportation, and some school bus companies have trained replacement drivers and matrons. The department has certified 49 new drivers and 200 escorts since the strike started, officials said this week.

“We have shifted from broad initial preparations to more tailored options for students disproportionately affected by the absence of bus service,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott wrote in a message to principals sent late Tuesday. The city has assigned Walcott police protection at work and at home because of the strike.

On Tuesday, attendance in District 75 schools, which serve severely disabled students who rely heavily on yellow bus service, was at its highest level since the strike began. About 73 percent of students in those schools were present, compared to less than 65 percent all of last week.

Print Print
  • Dnlilsis7

    How much is the round the clock police for Walcott costing the taxpayers! A lot more than their paying me as a matron!

  • Nyman_27_2001

    Both sides should put there diffrences aside and for the love of god come together for the kids being effected its a shame on whats gouing on….. the city to the mayor to the drivers themselves are all responisble….

  • Joe

    His administration drives up the costs.the while routing system needs a overhaul,the money he fines the companies that the drivers and escorts pay where does that go?

  • Guest

    The union offered to go back to work so DON’T blame them.  This is the mayor!

  • Clay

    A reasonable request by the union gets shot down by mayor-for-life Bloomberg. Too typical of his arrogance and being out of touch with the common person.

  • Former Turnaround Teacher

    I forget where I read it today, but apparently top salary for the drivers is around 55K and the Matrons 35K.  Considering this is a very important, and stressful job, I think that it is more than reasonable that they ask for job protections.  The fact that the Mayor won’t allow them to get back to work shows that once again his main interest is to bust unions.

  • Cps5

    I waited with my special needs son for his bus for over 15 years. We had good drivers and bad ones, prompt ones and one made me late to work every day while he dallied with the bus matron. Nevertheless, the bus drivers do a job that few other New Yorkers want to do.   

    As for the city and its elephantine bidding process, they could speed it up if they wanted to. I don’t believe for ONE MINUTE that pausing the bus strike as a good faith measure would delay contracts for a year. Without a two-three month break as offered and rejected I think frazzled parents should bring their public school students to wherever the bargaining is taking place. Let the negotiators deal with the 10,000 children at risk.

    Is it me, or does this article seem to indicate that good-faith has left the city’s side of the bargaining table? 

  • Prettyladyap

    This mayor is so ruthless I’m a proud member of local 1181 and would love to go back to workl…I miss my children dearly.I have the same route for 4 yrs and have seen my children grow over the years…formed relationships with the parents…..Thanks Mayor bloomberg….

  • wise owl

    Why can’t we all work for $1 a year like the mayor does? And we all know that things went up this year including our taxes. The mayor does not understand what barely making ends meet means. He is so far removed from the struggling people in New York City. I don’t know how this guy can go to bed with a clear conscience at night.

  • Waititoutmulgrew

    Impeach this zany midget of a man who is out to destroy the lives of native new yorkers…he is miserable deep down this winy little man should be impeached really

  • Flerp

    The city has no obligation to show up at the bargaining table because there isn’t any contract being negotiated between union drivers and the city.  This is why the union has zero options other than making as big a mess as possible and hoping the city caves.  

  • Sotovivian

    I am a parent coordinator at a district 75 school and i want to go home and cry everyday for my parents.  I see how stressful this is for them, how some have lost their jobs because they end up going to work late or had to leave early to pick them up or even had to take their child to work with them.  Some parents don’t send their other child to school or college because they have to stay home and watch their younger brother or sister.  I have parents in wheel chairs themself bring their child in walking all the way to school.  I wish the Mayor can spend a day in my school to see for himself the hardship that has been put upon them.  Why can’t he just give them what they want??? They meaning the bus drivers and matrons.  They work hard for their money, especially those that work for special ed.  why must everyone suffer because of this?? I as well as my parents can’t take this strike any longer, but we do understand why they are doing it.  Why can’t our Mayor understand as well??? Mr. Mayor please spend a day looking what it has done to all my parents..

  • BloombergMustGo

    The city had no obligation to open the existing contracts for bidding.  The high cost of pupil transporation is not a result of the costs of driver and matron salaries, it is a result of the chaotic transportation needs created by Bloomberg’s and the DOE’s inept handling of the schools.  Instead, travelling, which is disruptive to students’ lives and wasteful, should have been minimized by supporting neighborhood schools and expanding program offerings.
    As has been repeatedly pointed out, other districts around the country handle their own transportation.  However, in this case Bloomberg does not have the courage to defy the organized crime running the bus companies. 
    Once again, the whole situation is a thinly disguised last ditch effort by Bloomberg to engage in union busting.
    I am confident that the resultant “cost savings” will be negligible and pale in comparison to some of the infamous Bloomberg Boondoggles like CityTime.

  • BloombergMustGo

    The problem is not the delay in contract negotiations, it would be the delay in allowing Bloomberg success in destroying another union since his Reign of Ineptitude is rapidly (and thankfully) drawing to a close.  The children of this city are just pawns in his megalomaniacal games.

  • Waititoutmulgrew

    LETS IMPEACH THIS MIDGET

  • Flerp

    “The city had no obligation to open the existing contracts for bidding.”

    But the city had the right to do it.  Note the distinction.  You can force an entity to do something that it has an obligation to do.  And you cannot stop an entity from doing what it has a right to do.  

    “The high cost of pupil transporation is not a result of the costs of driver and matron salaries, it is a result of the chaotic transportation needs created by Bloomberg’s and the DOE’s inept handling of the schools.”

    Wages and benefits are always the biggest cost in any service business.  Just because individual drivers aren’t getting rich doesn’t mean that the cost of hiring drivers to handle 7,700 routes doesn’t add up.  This isn’t a complicated analysis.  

    The biggest factor behind the city’s transportation costs is special-education transportation, not charter schools or school closures.  There are legal and political limits on how much those costs can be controlled.  And the last time the DOE tried to consolidate bus routes, the union tried to block it on the ground that it would cost drivers’ jobs.  The more routes, and the fewer students per vehicle, the more drivers and matrons you need.

    Would you propose giving each driver a raise of $10,000?

  • Flerp

    Oh, and to be clear, the city does have an obligation to competitively bid bus contracts.  It’s the law, and auto-renewed and no-bid contracts are generally a bad idea.

  • BloombergMustGo

    This is a complicated analysis.  The routes are a result of extremely poor planning on the part of the DOE. Also, Bloomberg’s misguided attempts to eradicate special education have forced parents to go to great lengths to find suitable programs for their students.  Colocations and charter schools deprive public schools of space and facilities. 
    The drivers and matrons have a RIGHT to continue their emplyment if they have provided satisfactory service.
    The taxpayers have a RIGHT to demand transparency in the creation and reasons for creating of the ridiculous number of bus routes.
    The taxpayers have a RIGHT to question the ridiculous number of no bid contracts issued by the DOE under Bloomberg and the sudden need for abiding by the law which he has so flagrantly flouted up until now.

  • Flerp

    I’m all for transparency, and I’m all for making bus routes more efficient.  But let’s not be shocked when any effort to consolidate routes is met with resistance by (1) the same union that is now suggesting that it would support consolidation and (2) the parents of students who would have longer rides to school or longer trips to bus stops.  Again, the union has tried to block consolidation in the past, and it will do it again.  So if you want fewer routes, the union is not your friend on that issue.

    I don’t get why no-bid contracts are a horrible thing some of the time and then a wonderful thing other times.  Below, you chastise the city for putting bus contracts out for open bidding.  

    Which reminds me, I haven’t seen any photos of Leonie Haimson rallying alongside the chief mobsters of Local 1181 this year.  Did she figure out that higher busing costs means less classroom money?  Or were the photographs just bad PR?

    http://gothamschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/IMAG0688a.jpg

  • Whoistheboss63

    I am a parent of a special needs youth who takes the bus. I am also a union member for the state of new York. Although this strike is a hardship I agree with you all standing up for something as critical as job security. All unions are facing opposition from the government to disband. We all must fight.

Tips, questions, feedback?

Contact us at .

Word from Our Sponsor

Follow GothamSchools

RSS
Subscribe to the daily email digest:

Chalk It Up

Recent Comments

3 comments so far today
View all comments »

RSS Feeds

Newsroom posts Community posts All GothamSchools content

Archives

May 2013
M T W T F S S
« Apr  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Copyright Notice