The city’s school-age children remain in limbo while the bus-drivers union continues to promise a strike — but won’t set a date.
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 leaders are still refusing to set a timeline for the strike — but school leaders are convinced it will happen soon.
“It’s not a matter of if it will happen, but when it will happen,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said yesterday.
“This is totally irresponsible and disrespectful to our students and our family,” he said. “They are holding our students hostage simply by saying that they are going to strike.”
In his weekly radio address yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg blasted a strike as “misguided,” saying it would “needlessly” jeopardize the education of 150,000 students.
The union wants to protect a provision that keeps workers from getting the boot if the bus company they work for loses its contract with the city. The protections were struck down as illegal in a 2011 court decision.