New York City school bus workers authorize strike action
Bus drivers and attendants in New York City, determined to resist the assault on their wages and benefits, voted in recent weeks to authorize strike action against two school bus contractors.
The authorization votes were approved a week ago by 94 percent of workers at Pioneer Transportation Corporation and a month ago by 96 percent at Consolidated Bus Transit, which includes the companies of Boro Transit, SNT, and ANJ. Together the companies employ more than 1,800 workers out of a total school bus workforce of nearly 9,000.
The overwhelming approval of strike action, less than two years after a month-long work stoppage, reflects immense anger among workers over devastating givebacks, including cuts to health care, elimination of holiday pay and revised work rules to effectively force overtime without additional pay.
School bus companies pushed through these cuts in the aftermath of the 2013 strike, abetted by the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181. The union was forced to call a strike in response to mass opposition to then-mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to eliminate job protections for workers (known as Employee Protection Provisions, or EPP) and open up school bus routes to the lowest bidder.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/02/nybu-n02.html
