Schoolbus drivers fight back against attack
By Bryan G. Pfeifer
Boston
Boston's unionized school-bus drivers and monitors are
fighting back in the face of a series of vicious racist and
anti-union attacks by the mayor, the City Council majority and
Boston's ruling-class tabloid. These unionists, members of
United Steel workers of America Local USWA 8751, are working
with Black leaders, the community and the Boston labor movement
to quell this attack.
The attack focuses on the issue of installing Global
Positioning System (GPS) devices on the buses. But behind the
attack is an effort to undermine school desegregation and break
up this multinational union, which has been in the forefront of
anti-racist and other progressive struggles in the city.
The anti-union campaign began in early November, only days
after an Oct. 28 meeting at which the union rank and file
accepted a contract for which they had fought for over a year.
Drivers consider the new contract a huge victory. It includes
increased wages and a first-ever 100-percent-paid dental and
vision plan.
The contract also excludes onerous concessions like using
GPS on the buses. GPS is a spying technology demanded
originally by the employer, First Student Inc. Headquartered in
the United Kingdom, First Student is the second-largest U.S.
private bus corporation and the wealthiest.
On Nov. 8, City Councilor John M. Tobin Jr. proposed a law
requiring the school buses to be fitted with the spy devices.
Tobin has a reputation of being anti-union, and supports a
"Neighbor hood Walk to Schools Campaign," a campaign to
reinstate racial segregation in the schools. Bolstered by this
backing from its government agent, the company announced it was
ready to renege on the contract and put GPS devices on the
city's 720 school buses.
The GPS plan is calculated to show that school bus drivers
who deliver the students from home to school and back are
somehow placing them in harm's way. The company first proposed
GPS in collective bargaining as a wage-cutting and disciplinary
tool. Now it is falsely trying to portray its use as a safety
issue.
To force the use of GPS, the city would have to abrogate the
contract between First Student and USWA Local 8751.
Drivers expose GPS 'safety' issue
The Nov. 8 City Council education committee hearing on
Tobin's GPS proposal was first announced that same morning in
the press. There had been no prior notice to the union.
School-bus drivers organized carpools downtown during their
lunch break to attend the hearing, and a heated exchange took
place.
Tobin and other GPS supporters on the council claimed safety
was the main reason for the GPS devices. Local 8751 leaders and
members disagreed.
Union President Steve Gillis charged: "You are trying to
champion safety by imposing spy devices over real safety
devices, including more human monitors and safety personnel,
updating the two-way radio system and the aging bus fleet.
These GPS devices are anti-labor and have nothing to do with
safety."
Tobin gaveled and shouted down driver after driver, using
insults and prosecutor tactics. He even turned off the
microphone on the union's Black grievance officer after another
white councilor ran across the room to verbally and physically
assault the union speaker.
Days after this hearing, as the city's tabloid press and
anti-busers on the council like James Kelly vilified the
drivers as "thugs" and a "nest of scoundrels," the City Council
voted to reject funding First Stu dent's new contract agreement
with Local 8751, and sent the matter to the Ways and Means
Committee. Kelly had made his political career in the 1970s and
1980s lead ing violent mobs of bigots who attacked children of
color on buses bringing them into his predominantly white
district.
The union denounced the City Council's action as an attempt
to work hand-in-glove with others in the city administration
and First Student to implement the GPS and other concessions
unilaterally, thus illegally circumventing the collective
bargaining process.
African American City Council member Chuck Turner, a staunch
supporter of Local 8751, criticized the vote. "While many of
the councilors tried to deny they're using the contract issue
to punish the union for other activities," he said, "the
discussion on the council floor betrayed their argument.
Frankly, this is absurd. It's differential treatment. I have
never heard of the council having questions over terms of a
contract." (www.boston.com)
Union president Gillis denounced the council vote to over
150 drivers and reporters at a news conference Nov. 18 in the
Charlestown bus yard: "The Boston School Bus Drivers' Union,
whose members are parents and grandparents of Boston children
from the Haitian, Cape Verdean, Puerto Rican, African-Amer
ican, Vietnamese and working class white communities, views the
City Council vote as not only an attack on our meager standard
of living and our union, but as a racist affront to the civil
rights movement, whose task and goals of equal, quality
education we proudly carry out each day."
Union's anti-racist history
Gillis claims these most recent attacks are political
payback for the union's militant, anti-racist history since its
founding in 1978. He charged that the union is being punished
for its contributions to the 32-member coalition Boston Unions
United for Fair Contracts; its role in the July 25, 2004,
coalition to protest the Democratic National Convention held in
Boston; building the New England Committee for the Million
Worker March; being a leading member of the New England Human
Rights Coalition for Haiti, and its anti-war work in Boston
Labor's ANSWER.
Especially egregious in the eyes of Tobin and other
anti-busers was the union's active role in the community/parent
organization "Work 4 Quality! Fight 4 Equity!" which this year
organized thousands of parents in opposition to the city
establishment's re-segregation proposals.
Recently, a city-wide Safety Summit was projected among
African-American and other community leaders and elected
officials of color. Summit organizers invited Local 8751 to
help plan the event for early next year. One of the demands is
for real safety devices, like human monitors on the buses to
help with childcare, and not GPS spyware. This is recognition
that many view the city's anti-union campaign as an attack on
the Black community.
On Dec. 7, another act of solidarity took place when the
Greater Boston Labor Council (GBLC), representing over 100
affiliates and 90,000 union members in the Greater Boston area,
unanimously passed a resolution supporting the union.
After denouncing the GPS as a spy device, the resolution
concluded, "[The GBLC] opposes this anti-union attempt by city
elected officials to tear up the Boston school bus drivers new
contract with First Student Inc. and will utilize every
resource at our disposal to defend the sanctity of the
Steelworkers private collective bargaining agreement and stop
the unilateral imposition after the fact of anti-labor
concessions on these fine union sisters and brothers who have
served well the parents and children of Boston and the cause of
equal, quality, desegregated education for over 30 years."
Union movement confronts slanderous media
campaign
Beginning Dec. 6, the Boston Herald--seen by many as a
racist, anti-labor daily tabloid--continued the attacks with a
well-timed media campaign in concert with the mayor's office
and others, to vilify and demonize Local 8751. The union is
90-percent workers of color, of whom approximately 85 percent
are Haitian. The Herald's front page showed a picture of a bus
driver apparently sleeping in his bus, and alleged that six
drivers were doing the same.
What the Herald deliberately failed to report was that these
buses were on emergency standby for 12 hours daily and that the
drivers were on breaks.
The Herald continued this slanderous coverage throughout the
week. It quoted Mayor Thomas Menino's threats Dec. 7: "We are
going to do it [install GPS] administratively. It's a safety
issue and also it's a productivity issue."
On Boston Channel 5, as part of the city's attack campaign,
Menino, also president of the United States Conference of
Mayors, claimed without any proof, "The only people who don't
want to do it [install the GPS] is the leadership of the
union."
Not so! On Dec. 9, the GBLC demonstrated its solidarity by
sending a high-level labor delegation to a news conference at
City Hall chaired by David Ebony Barkley of Boston's Alliance
of Black Trade Unionists. The unionists marched in to deliver
the resolution to city councilors and the mayor.
Upon entering City Hall the delegation--including GBLC
Executive Secre tary- Treasurer Richard M. Rogers, AFL-CIO
regional representative Sandy Felder, and representatives from
AFSCME, SEIU, IBEW, UFCW, Steelworkers, the Women's Fightback
Network, and the International Action Center--was immediately
surrounded by police and security agents, who threatened
arrests for lobbying and leafleting.
After a tense standoff and negotiations, USWA Local 8751
vice president Frantz Mendes and Northeast regional AFL-CIO
representative Sandy Felder proceeded to deliver the
resolutions. Following the confrontation with the cops, Mendes
spoke out. "The reason they want to install GPS is not for
safety. It's to cut wages and to instill disciplinary
action."
Mendes was joined by Stevan Kirsch baum, Local 8751's chief
steward, who charged the City Council with union-busting.
"We're watching you and we're going to take action," asserted
Kirsch baum. It is clear that USWA Local 8751 and its allies
aren't intimidated.
Union supporters can register their feelings by calling
Mayor Menino at (617) 635-4500; fax (617) 635-3496 or email:
Mayor@ci.boston.ma.us. See
www.bostonschoolbusunion.org
for updates and information.
Reprinted from the Dec. 30, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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Email: ww@workers.org
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