Nine-thousand striking New York City school bus drivers and workers could return to work as early as next week, as union officials hint a “live to fight another day” strategy may be prove their best bet in the public relations nightmare.
The New York Post reports that Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 President Michael Cordiello will tell his 9,000- member bus drivers, mechanics and matrons to call of the picket lines and instead “live to fight another day” in an upcoming conference call, set for Friday evening, according to one unnamed source with ties to the union, in a New York Post report.
“He wouldn’t be doing this [telephone call] to be telling everyone we’re going to fight this ’til death,” said the source, in the Post report. “There’s dissention on the picket lines. They can’t live on what they’re getting paid. People want to go back [to work.].”
The strike began Jan. 16 in a dispute with city officials over contracted job protections for bus workers that spanned 1,100 of the school’s 6,700 bus routes, the Post reports. The city was doing away with the protections because the state’s highest court found them illegal.
Bidding started this week on those 1,100 bus routes, the Post reported.
The strike has proven a massive burden to parents.
City mother Claudia Nina said in a New York Daily News report that she’s had to quit her job in order to cart her two kids to their different schools.
“I’m not able to work. I’m not able to go to school,” she said, adding that her day begins at 5 a.m. to help her kids take mass transit to their schools, according to the Daily News report.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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