New Haven Independent

posted by: Bruce on September 13, 2012  12:12pm

Oh Boy, pickup is going to be a nightmare.

posted by: Morris Cove Mom on September 13, 2012  1:57pm

So this explains why my daughter wasn’t picked up this morning, or several other mornings in the past few weeks AND mentioned that she keeps getting a new bus driver? I don’t know if I should drive to school in a few hours to pick her up, or wait to see if she calls me.

posted by: Elaine in New Haven on September 13, 2012  2:10pm

Thank you to all of the bus drivers who returned to work!  The thought of no pick up at school today had me worried.  I truly appreciate what you do and know it is NOT an easy job.  Many Thanks!

posted by: Charl on September 13, 2012  2:58pm

Shame on New Haven.

(note:  I am strongly against the idea of unions in 2012, meaning I would never join a union.)

Another example of how poorly this city is run.  And guess what?  DeStefano will be re-elected yet again in 2013. 

How could the city have municipal workers working, without a contract?

Shame on the city.  But, I guess when they money you are using is not your own (rather, it is the slaves, i mean taxpayers’) then there isn’t much incentive to do the best job possible.

OK, I have never been a CEO, nor a mayor.  But, I have enough foresight to see that if you have city employees that can strike and cause a major problem like this, you do not allow the situation to get to a point where they can strike!  Why wasn’t the city renegotiating the contract over the summer?

Final note:  Not for one second do I believe that this strike was impromptu.  I do not believe that the bus drivers decided today to do this, and they happen to have a plan to park so close together to prevent towing.

I do like what the unnamed female busdriver said, “It would be morally wrong to strand the children at school.”

[Editor: The drivers are not technically city workers. Their jobs are outsourced to a private company, First Student, which has a contract with the school board.]

posted by: CatWoman on September 13, 2012  3:02pm

I’I'm hoping they settle this this evening. I really think that all the money invested into the schools appearance is uunnecessaryThey should pay the teachers and bus drivers more. As a parent I’m not interested in the buildings appearance im more concerned in the attitude of the teachers and there ability to teach.

posted by: OccupyTheClassroom on September 13, 2012  3:05pm

Solidarity forever. Our union makes us strong!  We will be watching this closely. All unions in New Haven need to watch this closely.

posted by: NHteacher on September 13, 2012  3:48pm

Before all the city employee bashing begins, I would like to point out that this is not a municipal workers’ issue, exactly. In this case, a public service (school bus transportation) has been outsourced to a private company.

I have been less than impressed with bus service lately, but I don’t know if this is the bus drivers’ fault, the bus company’s fault, or someone downtown’s fault. Who knows, when our services are outsourced and there are so many middle men!

There have been days when buses arrive very late to school in the morning. The children report waiting 20 minutes or more extra in the morning for their buses, and they miss the first half an hour of school! Unacceptable. If we had more true neighborhood schools, maybe more kids would walk, and the buses would not be so tangled up? (Simpler routes, etc?)I’m not sure what the solution is.

posted by: PH on September 13, 2012  4:11pm

Charl: the bus drivers pay taxes too.  All union members do.  All government employees do.  You benefit from government services, such as garbage collection, road maintenance, police protection, fire protection, etc.  So before you go ranting about how you are “enslaved” by taxes, keep in mind that the people who are paid with your taxes are (1) paying those taxes themselves, and (2) that you benefit from the services those taxes provide.  If you feel enslaved by taxes, please feel free to move to a tax-free country and see how you like living in anarchy.

Finally, though you proclaim to despise unions so much, do not forget how much you likely owe to them if you are an employee, or have ever been an employee: things like the weekend, the minimum wage, child labor laws, and overtime would not be here today without unions.  Even if you would not like to be a part of one, do not belittle how much they have improved the lives of the average person.

posted by: NHInsider on September 13, 2012  4:49pm

This was very poor judgement on the part of the bus drivers. How anyone could drop off children at their schools then decide to strike and leave these kids stranded at school is disgusting. I’m glad they came to their senses and got back on the buses to get the kids home. All of you First Student employees want insurance-how many hours of actual work do you do in a week? If it is under 35, you are not going to get it. How many of you have more than a high school degree, passed a criminal background and DMV test? You are permitted to bring your kids to work with you, from what I know you work less than 20 hours per week-how do you deem yourselves eligible for health insurance?? Keep in mind you are contracted through the BOE and remember what happened when Aramark started demanding full time benefits for part time, no education required work. Believe me-the BOE will placate you until a new subcontractor is found, which I can guarantee the search already started with your antics today.

posted by: Threefifths on September 13, 2012  5:25pm

posted by: Charl on September 13, 2012 2:58pm

Shame on New Haven.

(note:  I am strongly against the idea of unions in 2012, meaning I would never join a union.)

Five Things Unions Have Done For All Americans ...

1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend.

2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality.

3. Unions Helped End Child Labor.

4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”

5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”

You and other union hates care to give back any of the above benfits?

Without unions, workers will lose many of the protections against abusive employers.  Wages for all will be depressed, even as corporate profits soar.  The American Dream will be destroyed for millions.  And we will have a government of the corporations, by the already powerful, for the wealthy. —Kenneth Bernstein.

posted by: robn on September 13, 2012  5:25pm

PH,

NHI commenters’ crediting modern labor unions with inventing the “weekend” is getting really tired. Besides the weekend being a biblical concept, early 18th century Quakers were imrpoving the living conditions of workers; way before modern industrial unions.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on September 13, 2012  5:34pm

What does the city’s contract with First Student look like? When does it expire?

The city’s long term goal should be to make elementary and middle schools more neighborhood-oriented so that most students can actually walk to them from their homes. Those savings on busing costs could then be redirected towards transit improvements such as striping bus only lanes, bike lanes, bus shelters, incentives for CT Transit to expand service, etc. Improvements to public transit not only allow continue to allow students to get to school, but also help everybody else access jobs and services. Expanding public transit service would also create a need for more city bus drivers, so many of the current school bus drivers could potentially get jobs driving city buses.

Sending kids all over the city for school is one of the most ridiculous activities we partake in.

posted by: SteveOnAnderson on September 13, 2012  5:53pm

I was talking to a friend who is a public school teacher in New Haven this afternoon, and she said that she had never really thought about the bus drivers before. That’s one important function of a strike that should not be forgotten: to make visible those who are so often relegated to invisibility in daily life.

posted by: Ashley on September 13, 2012  5:54pm

“‘The compensation and benefits package we have offered to our employees is fair and equitable, especially considering current economic conditions,’ she said in a written statement.”—I like how First Student is trying to make it sound like they’re doing the best they can in a hard economy and not locked into a sweet contract with the city.

posted by: Brutus2011 on September 13, 2012  6:36pm

I am astonished that there are those who comment here that they are offended that bus drivers can strike mid-day thereby threatening leaving children stranded.

What is offensive is how NHPS management allows K-3 classrooms to be without a paraprofessional while having such a top-heavy, and very expensive, administrative staff.

This is leaving our kids stranded in a far more pernicious fashion.

We need to get our priorities straight.

Our kids deserve the public sector cash spent in the classroom—not int the education manager’s pockets.

Public education is a public trust endeavor and not a private sector “gimme the cash” scheme.

Or maybe, as the mayor has publicly declared, this is the real world, and I am naive.

posted by: OccupyTheClassroom on September 13, 2012  7:46pm

Is First Student a for-profit business? Does it have shareholders?  If so, maybe the district needs to rethink its associations.

I agree with making a living. But if this company has huge profits at the expense of low wages that is shameful. Remember that the state has to pick up where shameful companies leave off. HUSKY etc.

posted by: OccupyTheClassroom on September 13, 2012  7:57pm

It is a for-profit business that takes tax payer money to line the pockets of shareholders. http://seekingalpha.com/article/547561-school-bus-operators-big-yellow-buses-big-green-yields

People before profits!  We must resist the privatization of the public services. I understand that we currently must do business with some private companies, but we can’t put profits first. Ask Student First if they are students first,  profits last. Or are they more concerned about the bottom line than about the health of their employees (many if whom have children who attend New Haven’s fine schools!)

posted by: Threefifths on September 13, 2012  8:09pm

posted by: robn on September 13, 2012 5:25pm

PH,

NHI commenters’ crediting modern labor unions with inventing the “weekend” is getting really tired. Besides the weekend being a biblical concept, early 18th century Quakers were imrpoving the living conditions of workers; way before modern industrial unions.

What about the other benfits.

Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality.

3. Unions Helped End Child Labor.

4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”

5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”

Again if you and other union hates have these benfits give them up.

Pope Paul VI:
The important role of union organizations must be admitted: their object is the representation of the various categories of workers, their lawful collaboration in the economic advance of society, and the development of the sense of their responsibility for the realization of the common good.

“History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”                   

Martin Luther King Jr.

posted by: FAOUxP on September 13, 2012  8:55pm

Negotiations between the Union and the company started in the beginning of this past summer,and they haven’t come into an agreement. Apparently, still the drivers decided to go to work even though they knew that negotiations was going down hill, yet they still drove the kids to school. Now, they are complaints about kids getting picked up late or not at all; which doesn’t come as a surprise. For it’s impossible to pick up so many kids from so many different areas in CT and from different schools. Bus drivers are not machines but human-beings who try to do all that is humanly possible to pick them up at the right time. That is why we are also protesting because they give one driver too many stops, with a minute difference from each stop. It’s impossible, this way the company saves money, and bus drivers don’t make a full time work. Few bus drivers finish early, so we have to ask those drivers to pick up the kids the rest don’t pick up(hence, why the new faces that your children see every morning). Which is unfair for those drivers don’t get paid for that work.

posted by: FAOUxP on September 13, 2012  9:37pm

Please don’t put a tag on these drivers by saying that these bus drivers don’t have a high school diploma, or ask if they have passed a criminal background check, or a DMV test, THAT’S DISGUSTING!These bus drivers have to renew their license every 4 years, and according to this company if a bus driver commits any infraction out of work they are immediately fired.Which I’m not against; just goes to prove those who are ignorant that they also work hard, and the majority of them are law-abiding citizens. If not they are simply fired, which is what they deserve. By the way my husband earns a little bit more than I do, which is around $20per hour and he has a pretty good health insurance! On top of that these drivers don’t really care if the BOE finds a new company, they’ll go work at a new one.They don’t care for First Student is corrupt and is just exploiting their workers by doing a minute per stop for some bus drivers!First Student deserves to be have a fine from the BOE, and this branch should be closed. These bus drivers use to be full-time workers but now they are part-time workers. BOE already gave this company the money so why aren’t they getting paid properly? Where’s the money going?Also, the one in charge of FirstStudent drivers to move away their cars from the gates for it was private property. First of all why were the gates closed if the protesters weren’t violent at all, just PROTESTING and the police were there.Also, the protest wasn’t planned at all,there was a meeting made by the union to gather with management to update them about the contract this morning, at the library.Around 125 bus drivers attended this meeting, to only have management say that they weren’t going to talk to us about such a matter and left. This made the drivers upset, for the one in charge just walked out on them!A terrible idea for their were 125 of them; also its rude to just walk out on them,and think that’s nothing is going to happen.
Driver:We too are parents,& we know that these kids had to get picked up.We were just frustrated and the time flew by.BTW the kids were picked up as usual, & we weren’t going to leave them @school. Not after we left them there.

posted by: Jacques Strap on September 13, 2012  11:12pm

@ brutus—You are absolutely correct.  Worse, paras are being misused as substitute teachers.  The district is quick to blame teachers who might take a sick day, but all one needs to do is take a careful look at the long list of those making over $100K at NHPS headquarters on Meadow Street to know that there is enough money in the district; it’s merely top heavy.

posted by: Jacques Strap on September 13, 2012  11:14pm

I’m curious as to whether ROBN works and what she does if she in fact does have a job. City Hall?  NHPS central office? I say this only because she seems quick to turn a blind eye to the very real problems plaguing our city.

posted by: just my view on September 14, 2012  12:21am

Hey First Student give the drivers the 5% that Occupy Whatever wants you to do,  then pass along the new labor costs along to the City, who will have to raise taxes for City residents and business to pay them. That works - eh? Who wants to bet that costs people jobs in the long run. Short-sided stick it to the man mentality. Let’s run the country with all non-profit business like Occupy suggest.

posted by: Dean Moriarty on September 14, 2012  1:04am

I’m wondering why there wasn’t a similar outcry when Destefano threw Local 287 under the bus. Barely a mention, barely a comment. Oh, wait, they were just custodians.  Eh, I mean janitors.

posted by: Crww on September 14, 2012  7:25am

Today the issue seems to be one of trust; parents trusting that they can safely send their child to school, and safely have the child returned at the regular time and stop. Yesterday’s action caused a lot of disruption and anxiety on the part of parents, and some will not be sending their children until this mess is straightened out.

posted by: robn on September 14, 2012  9:32am

JS,

Starting the age of 16 ROBN has worked for a living in the private sector.

posted by: sillyputty on September 14, 2012  1:19pm

@PH on September 13, 2012 4:11pm

Saying all union members pay taxes is over-broad and non-specific. 

The tax issue isn’t income taxes, which go directly to the state and federal gov. and which everyone pays (through their employer if not through a W2).

The real issue is property taxes, which are the only revenue the city collects.  The majority of unionized employees who work for the City of New Haven do not live in the City of New Haven.  http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/most_city_union_workers_live_out_of_town/

So in fact, the majority of unionized employees who work for the city of New Haven do not pay New Haven taxes—neither through homeownership nor through renting. 

Thus, their taxation interests are different than the interests of city residents.

posted by: Threefifths on September 14, 2012  1:49pm

posted by: robn on September 14, 2012 9:32am

JS,

Starting the age of 16 ROBN has worked for a living in the private sector.

And it is the private sector who are riping off the american people.Just read this book.

Merchants of Misery: How Corporate America Profits from Poverty.

The book has scope. It is not an all-opinion rant, nor an expose on one abuse or one abuser. The articles collected cover the uses and abuses of the “fringe economy” through banking, check cashing outlets, pawn shops, home repair rip-offs, car loans, insurance, low-income rental housing, rent-to-own plans, trade school scams, and - woven through it all - politics.

Businesses that target the “fringe economy” make $200 to $300 billion a year off of the marginalized - the poor, the working-class, and often the minorities - who can’t get loans from traditional institutions. And yet, many of the traditional institutions that deny service to the poor - by not placing banks in working-class neighborhoods, by refusing mortgages in minority neighborhoods , etc. - these same institutions own a majority of the businesses that profit from the poor, through the nontraditional market.

http://anitra.net/books/activist/fea_1febmisery.html

Also was it not you choice to work for the private sector.How come you donot form a union on your job.

posted by: HenryCT on September 14, 2012  1:55pm

If we gave up the benefits that union organizing won, we could do without the bus drivers because the kids would not need rides to school, they would be working, if they could find work, and paying to ride public transportation, if we still had public transportation, to the sweatshops that hadn’t yet been offshored to really, really low-wage countries or the sweatshops that had returned to our great number 1 country because we had ourselves regressed to a really, really low-wage country, as long as they weren’t too unschooled to read or take instruction or too ill to work and, having no health insurance their parents could afford to help them recover, not yet deceased.

posted by: Threefifths on September 14, 2012  2:03pm

@sillyputty.

The property tax is the main tax support for local education, police/fire protection, local governments,and most of other local infrastructure.So this tax pays to hire people to do the above work.Case and point your tax dollars are paying this bus company which is not from New Haven,But is in West Haven.How about when the city contracts out to to companies and there workers dont live here.Also thses union workers have to pay the parking meters and eat.So what is your point.

posted by: sillyputty on September 14, 2012  2:20pm

@ Threefifths on September 14, 2012 2:03pm

My point is that it is “over-broad and non-specific” to say that union members pay taxes.

posted by: robn on September 14, 2012  2:49pm

3/5,

Not anymore, but I’ve been in a place where I’ve been worried about the next paycheck, paying rent, buying food, and affording a vehicle to get to work; so I know what economic worries are about. But I had brains, teamwork, and perseverence and some luck, and got to a different place. I joined this thread not to criticise the striking bus drivers (because I really don’t know the details of their beef) but to criticize the unrelenting union mythologizing in the NHI comment thread.

FYI 90% of the US workforce is private sector and only about 6% of them choose to be part of a union.

posted by: Threefifths on September 14, 2012  4:43pm

posted by: sillyputty on September 14, 2012 2:20pm

@ Threefifths on September 14, 2012 2:03pm

My point is that it is “over-broad and non-specific” to say that union members pay taxes.

You are correct when you say that union members
who dont live in New Haven do not pay property taxes.But also the companies who have contacts with the city do not also pay property taxes.My son got a parking ticket and he had to mail the ticket to a processing center in rockville marylandwhich the city of New Haven use to process there parking tickets.You think these people are paying property taxes?

posted by: Threefifths on September 14, 2012  5:08pm

posted by: robn on September 14, 2012 2:49pm

FYI 90% of the US workforce is private sector and only about 6% of them choose to be part of a union

True.But the reason why is that the private sector employer use coercion, intimidation, and retaliation.It is standard practice for workers to be subjected by corporations to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance, and retaliation for union activity. A study was done and found in the public sector that a atmosphere in which workers may organize relatively free from the kind of coercion, intimidation, and retaliation that so taints the election process in the private sector. Most of the states in the public sector sample have laws allowing workers to choose a union through the majority sign-up process.Also it found that unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow.Again how come you do not form a union on your job.Tell me were you work at and I will bring you the cards to sign you and others up.

posted by: PH on September 14, 2012  5:18pm

Robn, the notion that a weekend as we currently know it dates back to biblical times is a complete farce.  A brief examination of early 20th century history will illuminate for you how labor unions got laws passed creating the minimum wage and the principle of overtime for hourly workers.  Average workers in the early 20th century worked 70-80 hour weeks until these laws were passed.  When you work an 80 hour week, you do not have a weekend as we know it.  Therefore it is perfectly valid to state that without unions you would not have a weekend without work.

RE: silly putty.  If you read Charl’s rant, you would see he is talking in general terms about taxpayers and their enslaved status.  To the extent that you are trying to distinguish between taxpayers who are unionized and taxpayers who are not in unions, this is a false distinction as they are one and the same in their taxpayer status.

posted by: robn on September 15, 2012  9:56am

PH

I’ll have to check my copy of the Torah, but I’m pretty sure that for the last 3000 years, Jews don’t roll on shabbos.

3/5,

To me 6% union membership can’t be attributable to a vast right wing conspiracy. It means you’re selling something nobody wants to buy. Excepting the teachers Cops and firefighters unions, I don’t want to be a part of an organization that not only doesn’t reward exceptional behavior, but actually discourages it.

posted by: GIJODI on September 15, 2012  4:13pm

Bus drivers go through extensive back ground checks including being finger printed and also drug tested. All Results required to be squeaky clean before they can even begin the multiple training courses required to be a professional School Bus Driver.  Yes School Bus Drivers are professionals.  The training is so intense that you would think they are training to fly a 747. So being said, Please don’t speak on a subject if you don’t know the facts.

posted by: Threefifths on September 15, 2012  10:46pm

posted by: robn on September 15, 2012 9:56am

To me 6% union membership can’t be attributable to a vast right wing conspiracy. It means you’re selling something nobody wants to buy.

Right Wing Conspiracy.I am selling something nobody wants to buy.If this is the case.Do you drink Coca-Cola The workers of Coca-Cola in Colombia and Guatemala want to form a union But Coca-Cola, is anti-union and are using right-wing death squads to terrorise Union Leaders.

Coke sued over death squad claims.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1448962.stm

A Few of Killer Coke’s Casualties

Listed below are Coca-Cola workers murdered in Colombia. Many more Coke workers and family members have been intimidated, tortured, kidnapped, illegally detained and/or murdered by paramilitaries who have a history of working closely with management.

http://killercoke.org/crimes_colombia.php

People working in non-union jobs should know that their pay and conditions are set to keep the unions.Once the unions are destroyed, then corporate forces will totally screw.There are 2 groups of people who don’t like Workers Unions; those that can’t unionize and those that don’t want their employees to unionize.Let me come buy your job with union cards and then we will see if nobody wants to buy.