The City Council, at Mayor de Blasio’s bidding, reversed the damage done by Michael Bloomberg in 2013 to school-bus workers’ wages and benefits.

The legislation, passed on Aug. 21, sets aside $42 million in grants to be given to private school-bus companies to rehire or boost the wages of experienced drivers, matrons and mechanics who took pay cuts or lost their jobs last year after Bloomberg stripped them of their seniority protections.

Michael Cordiello, the president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, the city’s largest union of school-bus workers, applauded the measure, calling it “very much a step in the right direction to rectify the reckless policies of the Bloomberg administration.”

Cordiello led Local 1181 out on a one-month strike after Bloomberg stripped workers of their job protections. The strike ended after de Blasio and other candidates for mayor vowed to protect the workers.

The salaries of veteran drivers plummeted from $47,000 to around $24,000 after the workers lost the strike.

Some Council members expressed concern that the mayor’s pay plan would reward the companies that were able to secure contracts by slashing worker pay. Those companies willing to pay more to workers were shut out by the Bloomberg administration, they said.

De Blasio has yet to say whether he will restore the seniority provisions removed from the school-bus contracts, but officials have said that he plans to introduce some protections for senior workers.

New York Post, Aug. 16, 20

The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 21