At 7:10 am tomorrow morning, we will be happily reunited with my son’s bus driver and matron. I know it will be exactly at 7:10 because they are never late.
Sadly, Mayor Bloomberg has made certain that our reunion will not last long—in June, he will bring in a lower-cost workforce that will be more transient, less punctual, and most importantly, will have no experience with special education children.
The Mayor has claimed all through the strike that the bus drivers’ union request for job protection was illegal. Ironically, when it was illegal for Bloomberg to run for a third term in 2008, he managed to find a loophole. Given that he couldn’t manage to bring himself to a single strike negotiation meeting and given his poor legal record when it comes to educating my son and his peers, perhaps it’s time to conclude that he doesn’t really have anyone’s best interest at heart except his own.
Thankfully, advocate groups like The Arise Coalition, Advocates for Children, and Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST) continue to work tirelessly, understanding that the strike didn’t solve anything. There will be a public speak out this Thursday night at 6pm—please attend if you can.
Marni Goltsman
Capturing Autism 
Marni, I feel the same way. It was also illegal in my opinion, for Bloomberg and Walcott to willingly violate IEPs and to have such careless disregard for the children that for many reasons could not get to school at all. Shame on them. 4 weeks without schooling or therapy.
The union receives $1.1 BILLION per year.
By opening bids, the Mayor sought to lower those costs. The Union sought to enforce a clause in their contracts that has been struck down by the courts. This clause would guarantee that any senior drivers laid off (by a bus company that lost contracts) would HAVE to be hired by other bus companies – at the rate they were previously making (top of the pay scale).
I don’t know about anyone else, but if I was fired by my company, I could NOT just go to another company and say, “You can hire me – but only at the salary I was just making.”
Believe me, I’ve had problems with the Department of Education, but the union president is also to blame. The union refused to negotiate – don’t put this all on the Mayor and the DOE. The union president would not even sit down unless the Mayor agreed to put in that clause, which was already struck down.
I wrote my own blog about the strike last month, when I was commuting with my son both ways most days of the week:
http://mrjeff2000.blogspot.com/2013/01/ny-school-bus-strike-bust.html
Thanks for sharing your blog post, Jeff. I agree with your point that seniority does not necessarily equate with competency, but I also believe that on the whole, we’ll have much better bus drivers for our kids if we pay them more than minimum wage. I worry about new drivers coming in with no experience. The system in place is certainly far from perfect, as your blog illustrates, but I worry that it will get much, much worse.
The union refused to negotiate? Not a thing about that statement is true. The union continually asked for the mayor to negotiate and he ignored them. They weren’t asking for employee protections, they HAD employee protections for 30 years. The court case that the mayor was citing was a small case involving pre-K transportation. The NLRB ruled that the strike was legal. This was a strike the mayor forced, he got, and he won. But thankfully, he’ll be gone in a few months. Average NYC school bus driiver salary is about $32,500.
“In an interview with MintPress, Margie Feinberg, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Education, said because the drivers are not public employees, the city can’t legally negotiate with them, but added they are open to having a discussion.”
http://www.mintpress.net/8000-new-york-bus-drivers-strike-to-save-jobs-as-city-looks-to-private-companies/
“Federal law generally prohibits workers from striking against a secondary employer to punish a primary employer, but the board (NLRB) said that the rule did not apply in this case because both the city and the bus companies were primary employers. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/nyregion/nlrb-refuses-to-order-striking-school-bus-drivers-back-to-work.html?_r=0
Marge Feinberg is the same one who said buses were running fine in September except for a few hiccups, blah blah blah.