Vol. 77/No. 9      March 11, 2013

“Our union will defeat the remaining employers and get all our members back to work,” the statement continues.

Local 1181 officials ended the strike by 8,800 workers Feb. 15 without defeating Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to eliminate Employee Protection Provisions in contracts with private bus companies for 1,100 routes that expire this year. Bus companies are suing to get rid of the protections for the remaining 6,600 routes.

The provisions, in place for 34 years, require bosses to hire from the pool of all laid-off workers by seniority, before taking on new employees. Without the protections, any time a company loses a bid or closes down, laid-off workers would start as new hires, if hired at all.

“I’m glad to be back at work, but we can’t just give up,” said Laura Cangelosi, a driver and member of Local 1181. “Our jobs are at stake.” She was one of dozens of workers who spoke briefly to the Militant at a bus yard near JFK airport Feb. 25.

Workers say they aren’t defeated or demoralized. Many are following efforts by the union to win back the jobs of those fired when the strike ended.

The strike was weakened when some 3,000 workers organized by Teamsters Local 854 or United Craft and Industrial Workers Union Local 71 crossed the picket lines. Two members of Local 71 at the yard told this reporter that they thought their union should have joined the strike.

When strikers returned to Reliant Transportation in the Bronx Feb. 20, bosses said they weren’t going to take everyone back. “We all stayed outside,” driver Dionisio Peña told the Militant. “It seems the union steward was called. In the end, no one was fired.”

The same day Jofaz Transportation boss Joseph Fazzia turned away more than 100 attendants in Brooklyn. “[I’ve] lost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he shouted, according to the New York Post. “This union thinks they can tell me what to do. They can go f--- themselves.”

The attendants were back on the job after negotiations between Fazzia and Local 1181, the Post reported Feb. 26.

“Workers at Jofaz are back at work,” driver Horace Madhoo said at the yard near JFK. “But not those fired at Rainbow. We have to get everyone back to work.”

Despite a barrage of articles from the city’s big-business dailies during the strike that tried to paint the workers as selfishly holding students “hostage,” the majority of workers in the city backed the strikers.

“The dispute between the city and the union is clearly not over,” said a Feb. 21 New York Times editorial that scolded five Democratic Party candidates for mayor, who had written to the union asking officials to end the strike, for claiming they would each “revisit” the job protections if elected in the fall.

The editorial also backed Bloomberg’s attack on the bus workers and denounced union officials for saying they will seek legislation to restore the protections.

“It is time to let the market decide how this industry works,” the Times said.

School bus workers have a different view.

“We learned that only workers care about other workers,” said Madhoo.
 
 
Related articles:
On the Picket Line
 
 
 
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