Seeking an End to the School Bus Drivers' Strike

It's been thirty years since the city's school bus drivers went on strike.

In 1979, when the city's now-disbanded Board of Education put its school bus routes out for bid, then-judge Milton Mollen brokered the settlement between the drivers and the BOE that ended the strike by requiring that winning bidders hire laid off senior drivers when their employers lost city contracts.

Interviewed by the New York Times, Mollen, called in to attempt settlement again, said that there were numerous ways the problem could be dealt with, but both parties would first have to come to the table.

Weeks into the strike, that's yet to happen.

The Bloomberg administration has rejected the union's offer to suspend the strike, on the condition that the city postpone its new invitation for bids and mediate the dispute, with the unions calling out Mayor Michael Bloomberg for ignoring them.

Michael Cordiello, president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, and Lawrence Hanley, president of the international arm of the Amalgamated Transit Union, called Bloomberg's indifference to the unions irresponsible, noting that, in the past, mayors have taken a role in settlement talks.

The Bloomberg administration, as part of a new invitation for bids to replace contracts expiring in June for 1,100 school bus routes, issued specifications ending some seniority-based job guarantees for drivers.

It claims that the unions, by seeking to extend the old contracts until the strike is settled, is holding the city and school children "hostage" over issues the drivers can only resolve with the bus companies. 

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said that, if she were making the call, she would have agreed to a temporary extension to get the drivers back to work and the parties to the negotiating table.

The National Labor Relations Board has rejected an application by the bus companies to stop the strike, rejecting their argument that the bidders on the city's contract are caught in a labor dispute between the bus drivers union and the city.

The NLRB, in dismissing the bus companies' application, declined to call the strike unlawful, finding that both the city and the bus companies are "primary employers."

The bus companies vowed to appeal.

The article from the New York Times.