"I make $7.25. I can't afford a Big Mac meal," said Stephen Warner, who works at a Manhattan McDonalds.

It was still dark when the fast-food workers began gathering outside the McDonald's just north of Times Square yesterday morning. Carrying signs that read "Strike for higher pay for a stronger New York," they lined up outside the restaurant, where workers from the night shift were still on the job. Some of those outside were scheduled to take over for the day shift, but they wouldn't be going in. Instead, they were taking part in the largest strike of fast-food workers in history, as roughly 400 workers from franchises across the city picketed to demand better treatment, a union, and wages of $15 an hour.

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Leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union hosted a town hall teleconference last night to clarify facts surrounding the school bus strike -- facts that they argue have been distorted by the Bloomberg administration and the media.

Last night's telephone town hall was held for the constituents of City Councilman Jumaane Williams who represents District 45 in Brooklyn. It marked the first of what the union plans to be a series of many telephone town halls hosted in conjunction with politicians representing various districts across the city.

"It's in the mayor's hands to end this," Michael Cordiello, president of ATU Local 1181, said during the teleconference. "Quite frankly we've been trying to reach out to the mayor for over a year. It was quite clear from both sides, the companies and the union, that the mayor holds the key to ending the strike."

Getting Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sit down at the negotiation table remains a faint hope for the union and the bus operators. Although the mayor helped broker Monday's meeting between Local 1181, the bus operators and a mediator, Bloomberg maintains his position that it's up to the union to negotiate with bus companies for the Employee Protection Provision that the strikers want to preserve.

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As more than 8,000 school bus drivers and matrons formed picket lines around the city this morning, some 152,000 students and their families were forced to find alternative means of transportation in the pouring rain.

Jackie Ceonzo, mother of a 17-year-old autistic son, had to find a way to get her son from their home in the Upper West Side of Manhattan to his school located downtown in Chelsea -- all the while battling the flu and nasty weather.

"You know what the worst part is? It's that my son doesn't understand, and he loves the bus," Ceonzo tells the Voice. "So, the worst part is telling him that there's no bus coming and he's still in school. He's autistic so he's going to be so jammed up... It's not like I can just get on the subway with him."

For Ceonzo, as with the families of the some 54,000 other special-needs students affected by the strike, the journey won't be as simple as hopping on public transportation or jumping in a cab.

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ILA

Longshoremen workers at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts were set to go on strike Sunday. That's before their union agreed to extend contract negotiations with the U.S. Maritime Alliance for at least another month.

In other words, we were threatened with the frightening prospect of losing out on the fresh shipment of consumer goods such as televisions, sneakers and video-games -- and, to be fair, actual necessary goods as well.

Lest we forget, the marine shipping industry is big business, and longshoreman facilitate the transfer of goods shipped by water to the U.S. The 14,000-plus worker strike could have led to billions of dollars in losses nationwide and millions of dollars in losses to our region alone.

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Diana Eliazov

Prince Jackson announced last night that the JFK security strike has been called off.

If you're planning on flying in or out of JFK over the next few days, the rumblings of an imminent strike by contracted security guards at the airport starting scheduled to start tomorrow might have given you some concern.

(Alternately, even if you weren't doing holiday flying, the idea that the people responsible for airport safety make poverty wages, don't get sick days, and often lack adequate training and equipment might also have given you some concern.)

Either way, you can breathe a little easier, as the security officers have announced that they're calling off the strike after the Port Authority intervened.

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Diana Eliazov

Prince Jackson is one of the airport security guards who voted to strike.

Employees of two security contractors at JFK airport voted this afternoon to go on strike December 20 if their employers don't come to the table and address at least some of their complaints.

The timing of the strike, near the peak of the holiday travel season, could seriously snarl traffic out of JFK. It would be difficult for the contractors, Air Serv and Global Elite, to hire replacement workers, since it can take weeks and months for required security checks to go through.

The employees aren't members of a union, but they are backed by the Service Employees International Union 32BJ.

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Diana Eliazov

Prince Jackson is a security guard at JFK's Delta terminals, where his employer, Air Serv, pays him $8 an hour.

A year after the Voice first wrote about the struggle of security guards at New York airports to earn a living wage, the guards are escalating their tactics.

Tomorrow at 2:30, roughly 300 security contractors at JFK will vote on whether to go on strike December 20th, just in time to completely scramble airport operations during the holiday rush.

Two hundred of the contractors work for Air Serv, a Georgia-based company owned by Frank Argenbright, a man with a long history of cutting corners in airport security. Argenbright started Air Serv in 2002, after his previous company, Argenbright Security, was effectively sunk by an impressively lengthy string of scandals -- culminating on the morning of September 11, 2001, when Argenbright employees waved through two soon-to-be plane hijackers even though they'd set off a metal detector.

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Well, this completely backfired.
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Sotheby's Art Handlers, Back On the Job, Are Not So Powerless Anymore

We guess we'll have to strike the art professionals who handle some of the world's most expensive items when they head to auction from our list of the "100 Most Powerless New Yorkers."

Crain's reported yesterday that auction house Sotheby's and the Teamsters worked out a deal which allows the art handlers to return to their jobs, following a 10-month long walkout. The new contract will last for three years and include wage increases.

We've been watching the tale of the art handlers over much of the past year, placing them as number 84 on our powerless list last January. This was following months of protest which didn't seem to be getting them anywhere, as the unpaid workers tried to feed their families and make ends with few cards left to play (and as Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend told them publicly to go to hell).

But their efforts paid off, and now they're back on the job.

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Mayor Bloomberg just held a press conference with NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo to address a possible strike by the city's school bus drivers that would affect 152,000 kids.

Bloomberg described the proposed strike as "just outrageous" and said that "the city has been threatened with what we believe is an illegal strike." The disagreement stems from a Department of Education request for bids for new school bus service for special education pre-kindergarten kids. Local 1181 of the bus drivers' union wants an employee protection provision for long-term employees, something that the city says has never been included in the contract.

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