Published: October 4, 2011 Publication: The Village Voice By Jen Doll Today the Transport Workers Union, which last week voted unanimously in support of Occupy Wall Street, went to court to fightagainst the city’s use of city bus drivers to transport arrested protesters. Following the Brooklyn Bridge arrests on Saturday, the Union said the NYPD had commandeered numerous MTA buses to transport many of the 700 demonstrators arrested, and that ordering bus drivers to drive arres

Published: October 3, 2011 Publication: The Village Voice By Jen Doll In the aftermath of more than 700 reported arrests of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, Occupy Wall Street continues to occupy a large portion of the news. This video has been circulating of what seems to be a very young girl (we’ve heard 13 years old, though that’s not confirmed) being arrested by NYPD that day. Natasha Lennard, the New York Times stringer arrested on the Bridge, has clarified

Published: July 12, 2014 Publication: New York Daily News By Ben Chapman and Stephen Rex Brown Attorney Arthur Schwartz said he expects to file a motion in Staten Island Supreme Court within two weeks claiming his clients should be named as co-defendants of the city and state’s Education Departments, which were sued two weeks ago by the New York City Parents Union for failing to provide quality education to all kids. ENID ALVAREZ/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS The president of the New Y

Published: December 21, 2005 Publication: New York Daily News By Pete Donohue, Greg B., Smith, Nancie, L. Katz, Adam Lisberg THE MTA and its warring union couldn’t even manage to talk to each other yesterday – forcing millions of New Yorkers to suffer the consequences. Both Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority claimed they were willing to talk. Yet their only joint appearance came in a Brooklyn courtroom, where the union tried to bla

Published: February 5, 2006 Publication: New York Daily News By Pete Donohue BEING A BAD BOSS has its price. The Transit Authority will have to shell out more than $330,000 to workers who claimed they were improperly fired or otherwise mistreated by the agency, according to recent settlement agreements and rulings. And that could be just the tip of the iceberg. The payouts are going to just six workers – a fraction of the workforce that the agency hits with disciplinary actio

Published: May 6, 2010 Publication: New York Daily News By Pete Donohue MTA clerks working at the token booth at Penn Station-34th. St. subway station. A judge’s order halting layoffs of 475 token booth clerks will cost the already cash-strapped MTA about $100,000 a day, a top official said Thursday. A Manhattan Supreme Court justice issued a temporary order blocking the cost-cutting move late Wednesday night, causing pink-slipped workers to rejoice. The clerks had been sched

Published: August 12, 2010 Publication: New York Daily News By Editorials The Transport Workers Union is making the Metropolitan Transportation Authority an offer the agency cannot refuse: Replace buses with dollar vans on the city’s least trafficked, most inefficient routes. TWU lawyer Arthur Schwartz says the union is all for the scheme, provided, of course, its members are at the wheel at agreeable wage and benefit rates. While that’s a big catch, it may not be an insurmou

Published: April 29, 2011 Publication: New York Daily News By Editorials New York City Hall Mayor Bloomberg and Cathie Black last year. Some self-styled education activists have filed official notice with the city that they intend to sue Mayor Bloomberg for $100 million because of his failed appointment of former Chancellor Cathie Black. The New York City Parents Union enlisted what it described as a public-interest law firm – Advocates for Justice, Arthur Schwartz, member –

Published: May 9, 2011 Publication: New York Daily News By Meredith Kolodner NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott acknowledged the process could have been handled better. After vocal parent protests about insufficient candidate information, Education Department officials announced Monday they would delay the voting deadline for local school-council elections by a week. The announcement came just a half an hour before a judge was set to decide whether to issue a temporary res

Published: September 8, 2011 Publication: New York Daily News By Mark Morales Parents at Flatbush Middle School are suing to keep a charter school out of their crowded building. Angry parents at a Flatbush middle school are hoping a lawsuit against the city will stop a charter school from squeezing into the school’s building for good. The Explore Charter school has been holding classes in the building on Parkside Ave. – home to Parkside Preparatory Academy – since late August

Published: April 23, 2012 Publication: New York Daily News By Pete Donohue After illegal walkout, Transport Workers Union Local 100 lost right to take dues from paychecks for 2 years, and thousands of members fell out of ‘good standing’ Transport Workers Union members were united during the December 2005 strike that crippled the city, but hard feelings over the financial fallout from the strike linger on. It has been more than six years since the nightmare-before-Christmas tr

Published: May 25, 2012 Publication: New York Daily News By Clare Trapasso Queens Supreme Court Justice to decide its fate in 60 to 90 days Ericka Wala, principal of the Peninsula Prepatory Academy Charter School, wants to keep the school open, as do many parents, who are fighting the city Education Department in court. A Rockaway Park charter school won a temporary reprieve on Thursday after parents went to court in a last-ditch effort to keep the elementary school open. Que

Published: February 12, 2013 Publication: New York Daily News By Tina Moore The suit charges that 55% of street-level Sanitation workers are black or Hispanic, but only 3% to 5% of management meets that criteria. The class-action suit alleges that actions by the department prevent minorities from moving up within the agency. Andrenia Burgis and Leticia Smith are Sanitation bosses who are part of federal discrimination lawsuit against the agency. A group of 11 black and Hispan

Published: February 12, 2013 Publication: New York Daily News By Ben Chapman and Corinne Lestch The plaintiffs argue that sharing space with a charter will jeopardize its formula for success: smaller classes that provide students with more attention. Tyrone Francisco (far right, wearing glasses) is one of more than 60 students from Brownsville Academy High School who will be plaintiffs in a suit to block the city from allowing a charter school to share space in the school’s b

Published: November 22, 2013 Publication: New York Daily News By John Marzulli George Capsis, 85, of Manhattan, admitted slapping Officer Juan Perez after an argument over a police van that Capsis said was blocking a bike lane. The city settled a lawsuit filed by Capsis. But now Perez is suing the gadfly for allegedly assaulting and defaming him. George Capsis of the West Village received $45,000 to settle an excessive-force lawsuit he filed against the NYPD. Now an officer h

Published: January 13, 2014 Publication: Daily News By Barbara Ross, Kerry Burke, and Corky Siemaszko The newsstand dealer has earned points for pluck after he attended Bill de Blasio’s inauguration to appeal to the newly minted mayor himself. I’m back! That’s the headline for a beloved newspaper vendor who was bounced by the city out of the spot he occupied in Manhattan’s Cooper Square for more than a quarter century. Jerry Delakas won a new lease on what had been his life a

Published: July 28, 2014 Publication: Epoch Times By Petr Svab Kaylah and Kyler Wright are New Yorkers, first-graders, and twins. But while Kaylah excelled in reading last year, Kyler lagged behind. Their father, John Keoni Wright, blames Kyler’s teacher and he’s suing, but not the teacher—the state of New York. The lawsuit alleges the state’s teacher job protection laws shield incompetence. Wright is a member of the StudentFirstNY, a non-profit supporting charter schools and

Published: July 14, 2014 Publication: The New York Times By Kate Taylor Residents of the West Village will soon see something unusual arriving at the shiplike building on Seventh Avenue that used to house part of St. Vincent’s Hospital: ambulances. The shiplike building on Seventh Avenue that used to house part of St. Vincent’s Hospital is reopening in the coming days as a stand-alone emergency room and medical care center. Four years after St. Vincent’s closed, the hulking w

Published: December 14, 2005 Publication: The New York Times By Steven Greenhouse With a contract deadline of 12:01 a.m. Friday, representatives of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its largest union met intermittently today to stave off a strike as the agency’s top negotiator warned “we are not in a good place” and the city announced a sweeping emergency plan to contend with any walk out. On a day that saw some small movement on the key issue of wages, the negoti

Published: December 14, 2002 Publication: The New York Times By Steven Greenhouse and Andy Newman A State Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn issued an injunction last night that bars the city’s transit workers from striking, while union leaders, the mayor and the governor worked to ease the sharp tensions surrounding the contract talks. The justice, Jules L. Spodek, issued the injunction as the union representing the city’s 34,000 subway and bus workers was threatening to shut