Class War Goes from Classroom to School Bus in New York City
The wheels on New York City’s school buses aren’t going round. In what’s becoming a familiar song these days in America: education workers resisting attempts to balance budgets on their backs at the expense of students learning.
The current school bus strike in the Big Apple is no exception.
Last week’s walkout follows a successful strike by the Chicago Teachers Union last year against layoffs and the knotting of pay to standardized test results. Before that, teachers were a leading force in the 2011 occupation of Wisconsin’s capitol building in opposition to legislation that stripped state employees of collective bargaining rights. The measure passed but large sections of it were later ruled unconstitutional. And those who slept on the marble floors of Madison laid the groundwork for what would become Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement, challenging austerity amidst the worst economic crisis since the depression.
It’s in this atmosphere of heightened class conflict that the union representing New York City drivers, attendants and mechanics – who are responsible for transporting over 150,000 students in the country’s largest school
The current school bus strike in the Big Apple is no exception.
Last week’s walkout follows a successful strike by the Chicago Teachers Union last year against layoffs and the knotting of pay to standardized test results. Before that, teachers were a leading force in the 2011 occupation of Wisconsin’s capitol building in opposition to legislation that stripped state employees of collective bargaining rights. The measure passed but large sections of it were later ruled unconstitutional. And those who slept on the marble floors of Madison laid the groundwork for what would become Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement, challenging austerity amidst the worst economic crisis since the depression.
It’s in this atmosphere of heightened class conflict that the union representing New York City drivers, attendants and mechanics – who are responsible for transporting over 150,000 students in the country’s largest school