Considering the toll the strike had taken on drivers, who spent the past four weeks picketing in freezing weather while losing income and health benefits, officials of the union, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said they would try their luck with the next mayor. Several of the Democratic mayoral candidates have said they would favor the job protections. ....
All buses will be rolling when public schools resume classes on Wednesday next week, which was originally a holiday week but was changed because of school days lost to Hurricane Sandy.
The strike affected more than 100,000 students, tens of thousands of them children with special needs, who often travel long distances to get to the schools. Attendance has been down sharply at special-education programs, with many students staying home during the strike.
The job action also became a hardship for the drivers. They stood in the cold in far corners of the city, watching in some cases as replacement workers did their jobs. Their health coverage ran out on Feb. 1, and they were earning only $150 to $300 a week from union strike funds.
One driver, Everest Jones, 51, a single parent of two teenagers who lives in Brooklyn, said that the strike was hard but that he felt he had made as much of a stand as he could for the protections he still hoped for. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/nyregion/school-bus-drivers-union-in-new-york-considers-ending-strike.html?_r=0
The union thugs that went on strike, di so, knowingly that they were putting the severely disabled students in the middle of the strike. Most of the drivers drove buses that transported disabled students in the NYC Public Schools.
An example of the union thuggery: Mr. Jones makes top pay for a driver, nearly $29 an hour, but said that even if he were able to keep driving a school bus, his pay could be slashed in half. He has been a bus driver for 17 years, and drives 13 blind children in the Bronx, 7 in wheelchairs, none of whom have been going to school during the strike, he said.
More information on the union thugs: The strike began over the mayor’s decision to begin stripping employee protections from contracts the city signed with the private companies that run the buses. Traditionally, companies winning contracts for new routes were required to hire available drivers in order of seniority, but the city argued that a Court of Appeals decision in a lawsuit brought by several bus companies forbade the city from including the requirement in contracts. The union argued that the city was misreading the decision in order to break the union. The city refused to negotiate, saying the matter was between the union and the private companies.
And what effect did the union thugs have on parents?: The city gave out free MetroCards to students and parents affected by the strike, and has reimbursed them for cab fare or car mileage. Still, it has been hard for many parents, like Nadine Bennett, who on Friday afternoon was picking up her 8-year-old son, Shamor, who has autism, from Public School 141 in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn.
Ms. Bennett works at a Starbucks in Midtown Manhattan, and she said she had to take off one month from work on personal leave. “I had to take a leave just for this,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”
The drivers wanted job security, which was impossible to get because of a New York law an lawsuit and the drivers were employees of a private bus company(s), not the NYC Public Schools. It is possible that the current bus companies holding the bus contracts for NYC may lose their contracts at the end of the school year. The drivers demanded that if this happens, that they be employed at the new bus companies that won the contracts. Of course, this is total BS and the union knew so.
But that didn't stop the union heads, who live in luxury off the union thugs union dues, from striking and putting thousands of disabled kids at risk. And what did the union thugs get for their strike? Absolutely nothing.
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