In a wildcat strike that took Boston by surprise Tuesday morning, school bus drivers walked off the job, stranding thousands of students without a way to get to school. Officials said just 30 of 650 buses were on the roads.
While parents and their children struggled to cope with the unexpected disruption, union and school officials offered different perspectives on what caused the strike. Union officials were vague about their gripes, while city officials suggested the dispute centered on efforts to monitor drivers more closely.
Steve Kirschbaum, chairman of the grievance committee for United Steelworkers Local 8751, told the Globe that the protest reflected driver frustrations with Veolia, the company that took over the busing contract this year. He said the drivers were upset about changes in their health plan and the failure of Veolia to provide “key route information to the drivers and not communicating with the drivers in a coherent way.”
The Boston Public Schools posted a statement on its website saying the unauthorized and illegal protest “appears to be connected to the union’s ongoing opposition to changes that ensure driver safety and suitability, steps to improve on-time performance, and the new web tool that allows families to track the location of their child’s school bus in real time.”
According to the BPS, one of the key changes is a requirement that each driver physically check in with a supervisor in the morning to ensure the driver is physically ready to operate a bus. (Does physically ready mean not drunk or high?) Previously, drivers were allowed to take their bus keys home at night and just take off when they arrived for work.
–BRUCE MOHLÂ
BEACON HILL
State Sen. Marc Pacheco has filed a bill that would undercut Gov. Deval Patrick‘s plan to consolidate all local housing authorities into six regional authorities.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
A black man accuses Worcester police of racial profiling and claims a security camera videotape that would verify his claims has mysteriously disappeared, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
Middleboro Town Meeting voted overwhelmingly to allow the town to sell public land where a cross has stood for 50 years to the Kiwanis to maintain the religious symbol after threats from opponents who say the cross and the land sale are a constitutional violation.
CASINOS
The three finalists make their pitch for the state’s one slots license to the state gambling commission. The Sun Chronicle focuses on Penn National and its bid for a Plainridge slots parlor.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Governing examines the peculiarities of New Hampshire politics.
A $10 million gift from philanthropists keeps Head Start running in several states during the federal government shutdown, the Huffington Post reports.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia talks with New York magazine about gay rights, Seinfeld, and the devil.
New York‘s Jonathan Chait questions the inevitability of a federal shutdown.
ELECTIONS
The state’s top election official turns down a request by Lawrence mayoral candidate Dan Rivera to take control of the city’s election on November 5, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Lynn mayoral candidate Timothy Phelan rides a school bus and sets off a firestorm, the Item reports.
John Connolly leads Marty Walsh by 7 points in a new Suffolk University poll. Walsh will receive endorsements from former rivals Felix Arroyo and John Barros today, but a sudden strike by Boston school bus drivers will likely step all over that announcement. Walsh unveils a plan to improve Boston district high schools. Howie Carr says the pending Boston police patrolmen’s contract is dragging the Dorchester state rep down.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Now-old kid Donnie Wahlberg goes shilling for Verizon’s FiOS service in a TV ad showing him in front of iconic Boston backdrops — a nice bit of place-based marketing, except for the fact that suburb-focused Verizon has shut Boston out of its service, saying it’s too costly to wire the city.
The developer of SouthField, the mixed use project at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station, is asking the Legislature to revamp and reduce the powers of the tri-town board that is overseeing the redevelopment.
Ocean Spray and area cranberry growers are trying to spread the gospel of the bitter fruit to international markets.
EDUCATION
Gov. Deval Patrick says he has “very, very serious concerns” about lavish spending by
Westfield State University president Evan Dobelle. The embattled university leaderappeared on NECN’s Broadside and released a statement explaining his travel issues and a video criticizing Gov. Deval Patrick, not exactly a winning strategy for continued state employment. George Regan is leading the Dobelle offensive.
Gov. Patrick goes to Pittsfield High and hears about students’ struggles to juggle, well, everything.
Greater Boston wonders if all-women colleges are a dying breed in light of the difficulty in filling seats at the five remaining single-sex schools in Massachusetts.
An international study finds American adults do poorly on reading and math tests compared to their peers.
HEALTH CARE
A new state law requires insurers to reveal how much a test or procedure will cost, WBUR reports.
The president of the Quincy City Council quashed a move by another councilor to ask officials from the Steward Healthcare-owned Quincy Medical Center to come before the council to answer questions about the struggling for-profit facility’s financial health.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The new owners of the Brayton Point power plant in Somerset say they will close the coal-fired facility by June of 2017 after its price proposal to ISO New England was rejected.
The former Medfield hospital cleanup sets a precedent, CommonWealth reports.
MEDIA
The editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer is fired, Philadelphia magazine reports.
