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ATU bus drivers win two week strike

One thousand bus drivers won a two week strike against four private companies that provide para-transit service to the elderly and disabled for the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City. The strike was led by members of the Drivers Coalition, a rank-and-file caucus that organized to demand better representation in Amalgamated Transport Union Local 1181.

Strikers remained solid to the end, May 5, when they ratified the tentative agreement by a 2-1 margin. Despite management attempts to hire scabs (unsuccessful) and threats that strikers would lose their jobs if they didn't return to work, only a handful of drivers at one small company crossed the line.

To end the strike, the companies substantially increased their final offer of four percent annual raises for three years, according to Patrick Lorquet, a coalition leader and member of the negotiating committee. They added a $700 signing bonus, a 2% raise retroactive to September, 2003, a 401 (K) plan, a third week of vacation after seven years, three sick days, Martin Luther King Junior's birthday as a paid holiday, and the conversion of many part-time jobs to full time. "Drivers laid the groundwork for future advances," said Lorquet "by demonstrating to the company that they would fight hard and stick together."

At Atlantic Paratrans, the largest company, the Drivers Coalition began organizing in 2001 after Atlantic violated the contract by failing to pay drivers who showed up for work in the days after September 11. They claimed that no union representative from the local, a 14,000-member behemoth that represents mostly New York City public school bus drivers, had been seen at the yard for years.

Frustrated with the poor contract enforcement, wages that lagged well behind standards achieved by TWU Local 100 members at another company, and angered by the union's neglect, they formed their Coalition and published a rank-and-file newsletter. They charged that Local 1181 leadership, which has a reputation for taking care of its 10,000 school bus drivers, treated paratransit drivers as second class citizens, refused to hold union meetings, failed to file grievances when drivers were fired or denied overtime time pay, and ignored members in contract negotiations.

Despite its size and resources ($11 million in assets, $4.5 million in annual dues income, a $1.6 million payroll), Local 1181, the largest in the ATU, is all but invisible on the New York City labor scene. Many New York City labor activists have never heard or seen it.
Conditions at Atlantic Paratrans were tough. In August 2003, when the last contract expired, top pay for the largely immigrant workforce was $15; "some drivers have been making that rate for the six years," said Matthews Huggins, a Coalition founder. Many others remained close to the starting rate of $11. Seniority was often ignored.

An intricate payment system encourages the companies to assign drivers to long, winding routes, sometimes impossible to complete. It puts drivers under pressure and subjects passengers to erratic and late service. The passengers, the elderly and disabled, bear daily witness to drivers' job difficulties; they suffer their own indignities at the hands of the profit-driven companies: long-waits, busses that never arrive and frequent break downs. Despite the inconvenience, many passengers expressed sympathy for the strikers and none spoke out against them.

In Spring, 2002, drivers contacted AUD which reported on their story in Union Democracy Review (see #144, 146) and conducted a series of workshops with them on legal rights and organizing. Encouraged, the drivers formed the caucus and published a newsletter. Some drivers were ready to decertify ATU and go nonunion, others wanted to certify the Drivers' Coalition to represent them; a petition was filed at the NLRB. In response, the union held its first meeting for paratransit drivers in at least three years. It removed a timid steward, and allowed members to elect his replacement. They chose Lorquet, who wasn't afraid to file grievances. After the six-year contract expired in August, 2003, Lorquet was elected to a negotiating committee comprised of four members from each shop.

Drivers were dealt a blow in February, 2003 when Matthews Huggins, one of the Coalition founders, was abruptly fired from Atlantic Express for unsafe driving. It was an obvious attempt by the company get rid itself of a chief "troublemaker." Months earlier, Huggins, who had a near-perfect driving record, received a bonus from the company for safe driving. The union took his case to arbitration where he was awarded reinstatement and full back pay in January, 2004.

Huggins' return further emboldened the increasingly militant drivers who voted to authorize a strike in January. Negotiations dragged on until, fed up with the companies' refusal to budge, the thousand drivers struck on April 19 and, in two weeks, had won their battle. Local 1181 never encouraged them, but it did go along. It provided strike pay of $150 the first week and $350 the second, and assigned help at the negotiating table. But it provided no full time assistance on the picket line and, through indifference, lost a great public relations boost to organizing.

The drivers, by their own actions, created the opportunity for a public appeal. They won the sympathy of their passengers - the elderly and the disabled; state transportation department inspectors refused to cross their picket lines, Teamsters brought food and money, TWU Local 100 drivers at competing paratransit companies refused overtime assignments that would undercut the strike.

Local 1181 hopes to organize the nonunion companies. Yet, in all this, Local 1181 representatives remained passively out of sight. Ironically, two days after the strike victory, drivers at another company, who had decertified Local 1181 a few years ago, voted in an NLRB election to remain nonunion.

Here was the local's chance, in the glow of pubic sympathy, to send a message of hope to nonunion drivers. The strikers, led by the Drivers' Coalition, succeeded, but the union failed.

For more on organizing a caucus

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