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HONKIN’ MESS
School-bus-driver contracts and the politics of bad feelings
BY ADAM REILLY
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Craving some Springer-esque political excitement? Look no further than the festering conflict between the Boston City Council and the Boston School Bus Drivers Union. Ugly confrontations, nasty allegations, dubious logic — if it’s drama you’re after, this standoff has plenty. First, some history. Two weeks ago, the council held a hearing to discuss Education Committee chair John Tobin’s proposal to install global-positioning-system (GPS) satellite tracking devices on the city’s school-bus fleet, a move proponents claim could help keep better track of students. After a series of tense exchanges — and over the strenuous objections of union representatives, who claim the money would be better spent on human bus monitors and fleet maintenance — the council passed a resolution in favor of Tobin’s plan. Then, last week, the council voted 9-4 not to fund the bus drivers’ new contract. (The city owns its school-bus fleet, but pays a private company, First Student, to manage it.) While some councilors linked their votes to the contract’s contents, others basically acknowledged they wanted to teach the union a lesson. District Two councilor Jimmy Kelly bemoaned the union’s "attempt to intimidate" councilors and called for an apology. At-large councilor Steve Murphy spoke of "send[ing] the message that courtesy begets courtesy." And Tobin, who represents District Six, said union leadership was acting like a "pack of clowns." (The council’s progressive bloc — at-large councilors Maura Hennigan and Felix Arroyo, District Seven councilor Chuck Turner, and District Four councilor Charles Yancey — voted to fund the contract.) Not to be outdone, union leaders held a defiant press conference on November 16. They noted that their members are predominantly non-white (according to Steve Gillis, the union’s president, approximately 85 percent of the drivers are immigrants from Haiti), and that the students they transport are largely black, Asian, and Latino. And then — invoking the ongoing push for a return to neighborhood schools in Boston — they played the race card. According to Gillis, the council’s vote to reject the bus drivers’ contract constitutes "political payback from those councilors, like Jimmy Kelly and John Tobin, who have based their entire political careers on trying to roll back the civil-rights movement." If conflict-resolution experts were to size up the situation, they’d probably offer a few sensible suggestions. For starters, the union could eschew incendiary rhetoric in favor of arguing the merits of its case. And city councilors could resist the urge to lecture, insult, and grandstand. But if there’s a lesson in the example of Tom Nee, the combative head of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, it’s this: loudness, not logic, makes people pay attention. As for the council, it’s no surprise that members of that oft-maligned, inherently weak body are embracing a rare opportunity to throw their collective weight around. How will it end? Earlier this week, Gillis argued that the GPS push reflects a hidden motive: depict buses as dangerous, and proposals to scale back busing are more likely to gain approval. He also reiterated that the union’s contract makes no provisions for GPS devices, and insisted the council is acting inappropriately. "The city council should stop interfering in private collective bargaining," he said. "This is an unfair practice, and we’re certainly standing by to enforce our rights." Meanwhile, if District One councilor Paul Scapicchio’s comments are any indication, most of his colleagues aren’t feeling too conciliatory. "They’re just basically throwing as much crap as they can at the wall and hoping some of it will stick," Scapicchio says of the union. " ‘All right, it doesn’t seem to be working to say the council’s anti-labor, so we’ll say they’re racist. We’ll say 86 percent of the students in the city’s schools are minority and we’re looking out for them.’ And that hasn’t stuck. So maybe there’ll be some other things thrown against the wall." Stay tuned.
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