For University of Minnesota students, the bus strike brings mixed emotions. On the one hand, most students-cum-bus-riders are thrilled at a legitimate excuse to miss that 8 a.m. course (Sorry, Professor, I forgot how to ride my bike seeing as I normally take the bus). On the other hand, however, many of the students dependent on public transit grow familiar with a given route’s drivers, appreciating their promptness, courtesy, safe driving and quick service. Students want the striking workers, the familiar faces, to receive due compensation.

Though the United States has seen a steady decline in unionization due to the exportation of American jobs, U of M students are no strangers to unions and their message of fair benefits and equality. Last fall the U’s clerical workers, AFSCME 3008, went on strike. Posters in support of the workers dotted windows, and supportive blue buttons became the fashion statement du jour. Rallies were filled with not only students and clerical workers, but Metro Transit bus drivers, already anticipating their own strike.

Turn about is fair play. Last Friday AFSCME 3008 organized a rally in support of ATU 1005. Despite the brisk winds and near-holiday (after all, who really attends classes the Friday before spring break?), student attendance was strong.

On cold, blustery days like Friday, optimism and Pollyanna mentalities rapidly give way to more honest sentiments; Chris Pulley, echoing many of the chants and rally speakers, said that Governor Pawlenty, by refusing to negotiate with the union, is “screwing over the people who matter most.”

Jennifer Krieger, like many students, now relies on the generosity of friends with cars. Pulley bikes to classes and to work in downtown Minneapolis. He says he misses the bus but not as much as those who are totally dependent upon it for things like doctor’s appointments.

Emily Kaiser, a student at South High School who takes some of her courses at the University, relies on public transit for getting from home to the U to South and home again. Her father took his vacation time from work so he could driver her between schools. Chris Montana is luckier; he lives a few miles from campus and is able to bike or walk every day.

Yet Krieger, Pulley, Kaiser and Montana all support the striking bus workers. As Montana stated, “It’s hard to envision a situation when you’re not going to support the little guy over the big guy.” College students, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, have been the chronic “little guy.” Undergraduates at the University of Minnesota have faced rapidly increasing tuition and health care rates, while graduate students frequently work long hours and put in unpaid overtime as teaching assistants. The “big guys,” the Tim Pawlentys, Peter Bells and Robert Bruininkses of the world reap the benefits. Their wages increase, their health care plans are excellent, their jobs are relatively secure.

Notwithstanding the obvious disparity between the big guys and the little guys and the vocal support of students at the rally, the U of M student community has been slow to react to the transit strike. Unlike the weeks of AFSCME’s strike, there are no picket lines to join or to cross. The fashionable buttons in support of workers come in red this time, echoing the stopped traffic of the city, yet they were first handed out on Friday. Spring break and midterms, generous automotive friends and mild dry weather for bikers, have kept many students from focusing on the bus strike.

Come Monday, March 22, however, when spring break is a hazy memory and generous friends are adding up costs of being on call, when cars spray water from puddles at pedestrians and bikers alike and instructors are getting tired of the bus strike excuse, the reality of the strike for students will be driven home. Kaiser said, in support of the bus drivers, “they are good people,” a sentiment echoed by many in the few days before the strike began. The State’s betrayal of its loyal bus workers is a betrayal of its citizens. After tuition increases, health care cost increases, school funding decreases and “no-new-tax” woes of every sort, the busses sitting idle on the Ides of March can’t be a good sign; students and workers alike are turning to the State, saying, “Et tu, Brute?”

A few nights ago, CJ spent the evening bussing tables at Tria, a restaurant in North Oaks, and training someone less than half his age. The day before that, he went to a local franchise of Manpower Inc., “the largest staffing and employment service in the world.” After a standardized test of CJ’s MS Word skills, which means the difference between factory work and office work, the temp agency proclaimed him Word Master, a distinction proudly displayed on his website, http://www.underceej.net. It is accompanied by a photograph of the friendly-faced Bloomington native in a kung-fu victory stance. Manpower has not contacted him yet.

(left) One of CJ's pictures taken along his route

CJ has been driving buses for a long time, having earned his Commercial Drivers License in 1989. He hauled children to and from a YMCA summer camp, and drove the bus for the summer camp in Siren, Wisconsin, that his father ran for 17 years. A favorite souvenir of one of CJ’s trips to Siren is a photograph of a car with a bird wedged behind the front license plate, its head lolling disturbingly over the first number. While finishing his M.A. in Library and Information Science in Iowa City, CJ drove the University of Iowa’s campus bus. Three years ago, he moved to Minneapolis to look for a job here as a librarian, and found he didn’t really have the desire for one. He had hoped, as a children’s librarian, “to get the fun aspects of teaching children without things like lesson plans and principals to get in the way.” But he realized, “If you want to do anything as a librarian, you have to be in the administrative department.” Instead, he took a job with Metro Transit. CJ’s interest in the things he has decided to do (he has a BA in Elementary Education, as well) usually wanes when the time comes to actually do them. After becoming proficient, he decides to move on to something else.

Driving a city bus has not yet reached that point for CJ. He loves it. Having always worked in the service industry, he finds that he likes providing people with something they need. He also sees and hears things entertaining enough to put on a website. To document them, he carries a camera with him on the bus, and has snapped series of things like people having their picture taken with the Mary Tyler Moore cast on Nicollet Mall and like the surprising number of dogs who happen to be defecating as CJ’s bus passes them. One of his favorite things about being a bus driver—usually—is the people who sit in the seat closest to him, which he refers toas the “peanut section,” and talk to him. He even tries to know a little bit about a lot of things so that he can keep the conversation vigorous. “Whalen’s injured, huh? How do you think it’ll affect the team?” In the days leading up to the strike many riders brought the issue up to him on the bus. Some complained about the loss of the transportation they depend on, but all of them, even the grumblers, offered clear support to CJ and the other strikers. Of course, he has considerable sympathy for riders, but he also worries about his fellow employees, many of whom have families that depend on their Metro Transit jobs for things like health coverage. And CJ is angry at the state government and people who question the need for public transit at all, especially those who probably do not themselves depend on it, like members of the Minnesota Taxpayers League. He asks, “What kind of city are we going to have if we don’t have mass transit? It seems like things are going backwards in this state.”

Being on strike itself doesn’t seem to have gotten to CJ so far. He has avoided thinking about it too much, probably because what he feels is “some kind of survival instinct” has taken over in him, making him more worried about the fact that he “can’t afford to be on strike” than how the strike will end. Fortunately, his tax returns will keep him safe for a couple of weeks and he has the part-time job bussing tables. Doing things on his computer keeps him occupied sometimes, and he is also active in his union, spending time on the picket line and feeling the support of passers-by. “Lots” of people honk and stop to talk with the strikers. There was so much love in the air last week that CJ stayed on the picket line for a couple extra hours. He reported “two young guys on bicycles who stopped to see if we needed anything,” people who gave picketers food and wood for their fires and another person who gave them a $5 bill. It has made him think more about his desire to spend time on what he feels are the morally correct sides of fights like for workers rights. He thinks about Progressive Minnesota, and what it would be like to work for them. But to do that, he would have to take a pay cut, and he has to first think about his debt.

Being on strike has afforded CJ some fortune. He received the “geeky thrill” of seeing on the picket line Sandy Berman, a local sage in the world of libraries who “really wants to make libraries — and the world — a little bit better, a little bit fairer, and a lot more fun. For everyone.” CJ attended a recent pro-Transit Union rally at the University of Minnesota, and spotted Berman again, but missed the chance to talk to him.