Thousands of New York City schoolchildren and their families are scrambling again to figure out a way to get to school as the school bus drivers' strike goes into day two. And it doesn't seem like there's going to be an agreement any time soon—NY1 reports, "Students shouldn't expect their rides to return anytime soon. City Hall's message after day one of the strike was that there is no end in sight."
The city and over 8,000 school bus drivers in Local 1181 of the Amalgated Transit Union are fighting over job protections. Mayor Bloomberg wants to solicit competitive bids to save money, because the city spends an insane amount of money on busing. The NY Times has the crazy details:
The strike that began Wednesday, which idled more than half of the city’s school buses and forced about 113,000 children to find new ways to school, was prompted by a fight over union jobs. But its true roots are in an attempt to reform one of the most inefficient transportation systems in the country, one that costs almost $7,000 a year for each passenger, an amount so high that many of those children could hire a livery cab for about the same price. By comparison with the next three largest school districts, Los Angeles spends about $3,200, Chicago about $5,000, and Miami, $1,000.
Why has it cost so much? Lots of reasons—including corruption:
For decades, the city has embraced anticompetitive measures and carried on business relations with an array of bus companies, including some that have been implicated in bribery, been under the sway of organized crime and, in one case, run by a man who displayed a pistol at a negotiating session....
“The department was put in a position where it had its back against the wall,” said Eric S. Goldstein, the chief executive for school support services for the Education Department. “The bus companies negotiated as one bloc and the contracts needed to be extended.”
In one 2010 negotiating session with Mr. Goldstein, Domenic Gatto, the chief executive of Atlantic Express, one of the major bus companies, took out a loaded gun and said, according to court documents, “I know how I protect myself, so no one’s gonna intimidate me, this is how I protect myself, should we continue the talk?”
And the Bloomberg administration's 2007 reorganization of school buses was a colossal mess: Kids who used to take a bus at 7 a.m. were scheduled for 5:28 a.m. pickups. There was also a girl who had to take a bus from her school at East 81st Street in Manhattan to East 93rd Street, also in Manhattan—but it took two hours because the bus went through Roosevelt Island first. The city was later apologetic for the rerouting, realizing that telling second through fifth grades to take MTA buses by themselves was not a great idea.
Bloomberg has been regretful, saying he should have tried to take this on "10 years ago... I look back and say we should have tackled this," but yesterday he concentrating on blasting the striking driver, noting, "Four bus vendors—three in Brooklyn and one on Staten Island—reported that pickets supporting the strike blocked gates at their garages this morning in an effort to keep buses from those garages from leaving. That is illegal."
He added, "The drivers and matrons on those buses are not members of Local 1181. They’re either represented by other unions, or are nonunion workers. And I think it’s just an outrage that picketers would try to prevent them from doing their jobs. It’s an even bigger outrage that they would try to prevent kids from getting to school today. Union leaders have denied that this is a strike against schoolchildren and their families. Unfortunately, I think it’s fair to say, such disgraceful actions speak louder than words."
Notably, the last time this contract was rebid was in 1979. In the meantime, the Department of Education has suggestions for parents on how to handle the strike. But it's difficult for parents of children with special needs. From NBC New York:
Peter Curry's 7-year-old daughter, Maisy, is in a wheelchair and is usually picked up by a bus with a mechanical lift. On Wednesday, he drove her from lower Manhattan to her school in the Chelsea neighborhood.
"It means transferring her to the car, breaking down the wheelchair, getting here, setting up the wheelchair, transferring her from the car, when normally she would just wheel right into the school bus," Curry said. "She's on oxygen. There's a lot of equipment that has to be moved and transferred also."
