Boston school bus drivers battle for justice

The Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Steel Workers Local 8751, has consistently waged a struggle for economic and social justice. Nor have they limited it to the safety of the school children of Boston. The very existence and mission of the union is bound up with the struggle of the African-American community and other oppressed communities for equal education since the desegregation of Boston’s schools by court-ordered busing in 1974.

Children and their families support the school bus drivers. WW photo: Liz Green

Local 8751 was founded and built on rank-and-file militancy, winning union recognition and respect through nine wildcat strikes in 34 years. Its solidarity with the labor movement and community and its strength and unity have prevailed in all its contract battles since 1991 without the union having to go out on strike.

The union, which has an upstanding tradition of fighting militantly for its rights, has been mobilizing behind a slogan of “No concessions, no cuts” and “Safety for the children, justice for the drivers.” The slogan on the USW Task Force for Contract Justice T-shirt, under the graphic of a coiled and poised Cobra with fangs bared, says it all: “Local 8751 - will strike if provoked.”

‘No contract, no work’

Hundreds of Boston’s school bus drivers took their battle for a just contract to First Student’s door at the summer job bid where workers sign up to drive specific routes. The drivers liberated the block in front of the Washington Street School Bus Yard on June 21 from 5 a.m. until the bid ended at noon.

Reggae and Hip-Hop music boomed from the union’s sound truck. The drivers’ chants of “No contract, no work,” “First Student, you should know, union busting’s got to go,” “Safety for the students, justice for the drivers” and “The buses don’t roll til the union says go!” resounded far and wide. First Student is the name of the private nationwide bus monopoly employing the drivers.

The union workforce is over 80 percent Haitian and includes immigrants from many other countries and many African-American drivers as well.

Upon arriving at the yard, USW Task Force leaders deployed activists on and off the property, effectively seizing control of the drivers’ room, the bid room, the lot and the gate. The organizers posted the walls with the message that all bids for routes were contingent on a signed contract between First Student and USW Local 8751.

After drivers signed up for summer work, they came out and joined the picket line. This sent a clear message to the company that unless a contract was in place, no buses will roll. The drivers’ current contract with the company ends June 30, so picketers repeatedly chanted, “Eight more days.”

Solidarity with strikers

Members of the International Action Center were on hand to show their solidarity, as was Bishop Filipe Teixeira, OFSJC, and Ed Childs, chief shop steward of Unite/HERE Local 26. Childs’ local is in the middle of a three-day strike for justice and an ongoing boycott against Aramark Corp. by food workers at the Hynes Convention Center and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

The new African-American Superintendent of Schools, Carol Johnson, was so concerned about the situation that she was on hand inside the Washington Street First Student facility starting at 5 a.m.

The USW Task Force for Contract Justice has been meeting and mobilizing since March to fight First Student and win the fair contract the drivers deserve. Within the last year First Student consolidated its monopoly in bus transportation in the United States by taking over its chief rival, Laidlaw Corporation, which owns Greyhound.

After eliminating the competition, the company extorted a $6 million bonus and a $343 million five-year contract from the Boston School Department. This no-bid, corrupt, sweetheart deal involved not only the City of Boston and First Group (the holding company for First Student), but also the U.S. Justice Department and the Massachusetts Attorney General.

The company has been systematically attacking worker rights, accumulating a five-year backlog of literally hundreds of unresolved grievances involving failure to pay in full for time worked as well as many other violations of workers rights.

In the negotiations, the company has demanded concessions from the union on work rules, safety and due process. For example, the bosses demanded the right to discipline drivers before an accident review board hearing ever takes place, criminalizing the drivers and making them “guilty until proven innocent.” The company also calls for job cuts, pay cuts and hours reductions, including using GPS surveillance to cut workers’ pay.

The struggle for equality of education

Back in 1974, 20 years after the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, Boston was still running completely segregated schools. In the first year of court-ordered integration won by the struggle of African-American parents, the school buses were attacked by racist forces and Boston became an international symbol of racism.

It took a 25,000-strong national march against racism in Boston in December 1974 to take the wind out of the sails of the racist mobilization. At that time there had not been a person of color on either the Boston City Council or the Boston School Committee since Reconstruction. Throughout that time and since, the union has been the strongest ally of parents of color in their fight for access to quality education for their children.

It should come as no surprise then that as the union fights for a fair contract, the powerful racist forces in the city, starting with three-term Mayor Thomas Menino, have renewed their racist campaign for a return to neighborhood schools and have attacked the transportation program. In his state-of-the-city address in January, Menino called for revamping the school assignment process and returning to neighborhood schools.

During the 35 years of desegregation, the city systematically closed schools in the oppressed communities of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. That means children of color have no neighborhood schools to go to there.

In a move reminiscent of 1974—when the racist anti-busing organization was led by the Boston City Council and organized from City Council chambers in Boston City Hall—the racist forces on today’s Boston City Council called a hearing on June 13 to grill the Superintendent of Schools and the Boston School Department. The racists demanded to know when the school officials would have a new student assignment and transportation plan ready to follow Mayor Menino’s plan. It should be noted the Boston School Committee is now appointed by the Mayor.

At the forefront fighting against this continual drive to return to the racist past have been African-American City Councilor Councilor Chuck Turner and Team Unity, Boston city councilors of color, with unstinting support from the Boston School Bus Drivers Union.

Union’s role in anti-racist struggle

In 2004, when the last attempt was made to dismantle access to equal quality education through an attack on the student assignment plan, the bus drivers passed out thousands of leaflets to the students on the buses to alert and mobilize parents to a community meeting at the 12th Baptist Church in Roxbury where the plan was to be reviewed. The community came out hundreds strong and made clear it would not tolerate a return to the racist past with communities of color denied access to the best educational opportunities.

This year when the racist city councilors, led by Ways and Means Committee Chair Steve Murphy, called their hearing on the student assignment model, City Councilor Turner eloquently expressed the community’s opposition. But parents and the community were unable to come forward in large numbers because the hearing was deliberately called in the middle of a workday with virtually no notice.

The Boston School Bus Drivers Union, along with the International Action Center and Work for Quality—the community group that has been fighting and organizing on this issue since 2004—were there to roundly denounce the racists’ plan and call it the racist attack that it is.