Vol. 77/No. 3      January 28, 2013

The Militant stands shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of New York school bus drivers, matrons and mechanics on strike. They face a furious offensive by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, city politicians and their media cheerleaders, seeking to turn working-class sentiment against them.

At the heart of their propaganda offensive is blaming the strikers for inconveniences and hardships working-class parents may incur over the course of this fight city authorities instigated. The aim is to obfuscate on which side of this dispute our interests lie, particularly in the context of the broader offensive against the working class.

As employees of private bus companies that contract with the city—and who can be tossed aside if a different company wins the next contract by bidding cheaper—their jobs and livelihoods are dependent on the Employee Protection Provisions they won in past struggle. The EPPs require whichever boss wins the bid to hire from a master list, highest seniority first, with basic job and pay protections that are fundamental to the existence of any union.

The city government and the bosses hate it. It stands as a barrier to their austerity drive against workers, from the schools to the transit barns. They are determined to roll back past gains and are using every anti-labor slander in the book to break down working-class solidarity in order to isolate the school bus workers and deal major blows to their union.

They daydream about a “flexible” part-time workforce, on split shift—on the clock for the ride to school in the morning and come back to work at the end of classes, working near minimum wage.

The bosses’ media mouthpieces have called the strikers mafia-tools, racists and extortionists. They say the workers don’t care about the students they transport, only about their high-paying job trust.

City officials declare they have a court order that nullifies the EPP. But their courts don’t decide. The existence of the protections will be decided the same way they were established—in the course of struggle.

Join the strikers’ picket lines, bring coworkers and friends to any support rallies that are called. Get out the truth and build solidarity. The Militant, a socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people, will answer the lies of the boss press.
 
 
Related articles:
9,000 NY school bus workers walk out to secure their jobs
Farmworkers in S. Africa strike again over pay
Seven workers injured in New York crane collapse
Wash. Teamsters vote down United Natural Foods ‘offer’
Striker: ‘They’re trying to break the union’
LA port drivers: ‘Union victory was about respect’
Cellphone workers in Israel win union recognition
Bangladesh protest: ‘Arrest garment boss for fire deaths’
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home