Union Acts to Defend Victimized Bus Driver

NYC

Bus drivers and other members of New York City’s Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 were outraged when a union brother was arrested after a tragic accident in Brooklyn on December 23. For at least an hour on December 24, buses out of four or more Brooklyn depots—Jackie Gleason, Flatbush, Ulmer Park and East New York—did not roll, as drivers engaged in a work-to-rule action protesting the arrest. Local 100 president John Samuelsen condemned the arrest as “an attack against all New York City Transit Workers.”

The bus operated by 57-year-old Reginald Prescott had struck and killed a man in the crosswalk at a dangerous intersection in Brooklyn during the evening rush hour. A seven-and-a-half-year veteran with a safe record behind the wheel, Prescott was making a difficult left turn under poor conditions when the pedestrian, a 78-year-old man, was hit. Both the driver and the pedestrian had a green light. The distraught driver was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for trauma. Prescott was arrested and cuffed at the hospital, in front of his wife, on the misdemeanor charge of “failing to yield.”

Victimized by a city law that was revised under Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Vision Zero” traffic initiative to criminalize such accidents, Prescott was promptly suspended by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) without pay. The TWU bureaucracy undermines the defense of the union membership by its support to capitalist politicians, including by channeling votes to the Working Families Party, a shill for the Democrats that supported de Blasio for mayor in the 2013 elections.

In a transit system chock full of hazardous work, driving a bus in traffic-clogged NYC with its millions of pedestrians is especially tough. And it’s not made any easier by MTA management constantly hounding TWU members, badgering them to keep to strict schedules. Before Vision Zero, the MTA was already subjecting traumatized bus drivers involved in fatal accidents to drug tests and, sometimes, suspensions. The bosses routinely shift blame for accidents caused by unsafe conditions onto transit workers. Put through the MTA wringer after such tragedies, some drivers never go back to the job. Now they get hauled off to jail as well, with the threat of a life-wrecking criminal record hanging over their heads.

One bus driver told Workers Vanguard that TWU members at the East New York depot have taken up a collection to help offset Reginald Prescott’s lost wages. When a hearing is convened in the case—February 24, according to the union—Local 100 members and their allies should pack the courtroom. Drop the charges against Reginald Prescott! Reinstate him now!