NEW YORK CITY, December 26 — “How can you have people with 35 years on the job get fired, while they hire somebody off the streets? It’s not fair, it’s not right.” That’s what a woman school bus driver with 26 years on the job had to say as she and more than 100 of her co-workers picketed outside their union hall, demanding the resignation of their union president. As Mayor de Blasio starts negotiating contracts for 300,000 city workers, today’s rally is an opening shot in what can be a major antiracist struggle against this capitalist state.
The school bus drivers and matrons are members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1811. In January 2013, they led a month-long strike — the first school bus strike since the three-month 1979 wildcat — against racist billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and the bus company contractors who wanted to eliminate any seniority or job security by doing away with the Employee Protection Provision (EPP) in their contract. The EPP states that when a bus company won the bid to a particular route, the workers who had been driving that route would keep their jobs. The clause had been won by the workers during the 1979 strike. Bloomberg decided to accept bids on certain school bus routes without the EPP and the workers flexed their class power by responding with a strike.
During the five weeks of mass pickets, rallies and marches in the frigid winter, PLP organized workers and students to join the strikers. Hundreds of CHALLENGEs were circulated. Rather than have all the more than 300,000 city workers who also had no contract shut the city down with a general strike, the racist ATU leadership and the Democrats pulled the rug out from under the mostly immigrant strikers. All five Democratic mayoral candidates signed a letter telling workers to return to work without a contract, and that after becoming mayor, they would “revisit the EPP.” This exposes whom politicians and union leaders actually serve: the bosses. The ATU leadership’s class position — like all unions — support capitalist profits against workers’ need.
The strike ended and dozens of workers found they had no jobs to return to. Many were fired and replaced; some bus companies shut down and later reopened with new names and new lower paid workers. On December 17, parents and bus drivers protested the shutdown of the Atlantic Express, the fifth largest school bus operator in the U.S. and Canada. Strikebreakers who had crossed the picket lines kept their jobs. And the ATU leadership did nothing. The Democratic candidates, including de Blasio, did nothing. It was a brutal racist attack on mostly black and Latino and immigrant workers and the families they serve.
While life has gotten much harder for the remaining and former drivers and matrons, PLP is fighting alongside and strengthening our ties. A delegation of strikers attended PLP’s May Day celebration last spring, and friends were active in today’s picket at ATU headquarters and in the rally protesting the closing of Atlantic Express. The school bus drivers and matrons have let us know that they are ready to fight. We will challenge the politicians and union leaders for the political leadership of a growing number of transport workers as we continue to struggle alongside our friends to win them to communism.