The meeting was called to hear a proposed deal to end the five-week walkout by workers at three private bus companies in this borough. Brokered by Queens Borough president Helen Marshall, several city council members, and the administration of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, the deal was designed to get the buses rolling on Monday, despite the lack of a hammered out agreement. Marshall unilaterally declared the strike settled and that the buses would be rolling again the following day.

"We have already been back a couple of times, and it’s the same thing--they want us to go back with promises," said Sam Connolly, a striker who was attending the meeting with his father, a retired union bus driver. "We say unless we have a contract that’s signed, sealed, and delivered, we have no deal!"

Echoing the sentiment of most of those who walked out, John Mantione, a mechanic at Queens Surface, said, "Politicians, once again, came to us with promises. You know how they say talk is cheap? Well, promises are cheaper than talk."

The 1,500 unionists, who work for three bus companies--Queens Surface Corporation, Jamaica Buses Inc., and Triboro Coach Corporation--struck on June 17 for guarantees in wages, health and welfare, and job security. The bus routes, although run by private companies, are integrated into the New York Metropolitan Transit System.

The strikers have been without a contract since January 2001. Union members organized two brief walkouts in January and February of this year. The latest strike was sparked by the Bloomberg administration’s decision to renege on a March pledge to increase city payments to Local 100’s health benefit fund by 19 percent, the same increase pledged to the public workers union. Instead, the city government said they would provide 3.5 percent over two years.

The contract offer, presented several days earlier by Marshall, would provide increases in health benefits funded by a $2 million city loan, to be repaid by "productivity increases," which many workers took to mean speedup and layoffs. And the deal did not address the question of what will happen to the workers and their union once the private bus companies’ contracts with the city expire next year. Union members are demanding contract language stipulating that their jobs and union contract will continue if a new company or the city takes over the routes.

"We have always had a much better productivity rate than the MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority], but now they want more," Teddy, a mechanic for 10 years at Queens Surface, told the Militant. "I don’t know where that can come from except from cutting back on safety. Productivity is a safety issue."

At the contract meeting, a third of the more than 600 unionists present, according to Newsday reporter Bobby Cuza, had walked out of the meeting, just minutes after Marshall and City Council members from Queens had held a news conference outside to declare the strike virtually settled.

The workers made it clear that job security was of great concern to them. Michael Curran, TWU Local 100 division chairman for the Queens lines employees, told the press, "We are not going back to work until we have employee protection, and that means they have to guarantee our wages and our health and welfare and protection plans." Responding to the Bloomberg admin–istration’s charge that the union "has changed its tune" in raising the job security issue, Curran said, "From Day 1, it was brought up quite clear that it had to do with employee protection."  
 
 
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