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Article

31 May 2020

Author:
Madeleine Carlisle, Time

Union bus drivers in Minneapolis & NYC refuse to help with police transportation following killing of George Floyd by police

"Bus drivers in Minneapolis and New York City have refused to help with police transportation," 30 May 2020

Union bus drivers in multiple cities are refusing to drive buses dispatched for police, issuing statements of solidarity and demanding justice in George Floyd’s murder... protests have broken out throughout the U.S. since Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed during an arrest over an alleged forgery at a grocery store in Minneapolis... The increase in arrests has caused some police departments to dispatch city buses to transport police to protests and to take arrested protesters to jail. While police can legally commandeer buses, many transportation unions leave it up to individual bus drivers on whether they wish to assist the police.

... Amalgamated Transit Union [in Minneapolis]... said in a statement... that their members have a right to refuse “the dangerous duty” of transporting protesters “away from these communities where many of these drivers live” as well as the right to refuse transporting police to the demonstrations themselves. “This is a misuse of public transit,” President John Costa said in the statement... “It’s not our role to transport arrested protesters,” John Samuelsen, the International President of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), which represents bus drivers in multiple cities, tells TIME. “We transport passengers, the working people of New York and every other city where we run the transit system.”... TWU’s official position is that bus drivers should refuse to transport protesters to jail if their bus is commandeered by the police.

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