Today's Times carries a front-page article on the New York City school bus drivers strike. Like the coverage leading up to the strike, it doesn't include any information about how much the bus drivers are paid. That information is usually, and justifiably, considered relevant by readers trying to make judgments about whether to side with the striking bus drivers or with the mayor.
For some hours yesterday the Times home page carried an article by Marc Santora that quoted a union leader saying that the bus drivers' wages start at $14 an hour and the wages of "matrons" – the archaic term that the paper has been using for bus monitors — start at $11 an hour. The Times's longtime labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, tweeted that information. But that information has been omitted from the article linked in Mr. Greenhouse's tweet, which is no longer easily found on the Times web site.
If an editor took the information out until more information could be gathered on bus driver wages, the editor probably made a smart move. The starting salary, after all, is just one piece of the puzzle, and a potentially misleading piece at that. To get a full picture, one would need to know not just the starting salary, but the top salary for bus drivers and monitors with years of seniority, as well as perhaps the average salary. What about overtime? Is the pay hourly, or annual, and, if annual, do the drivers get paid during summers and school vacations if they aren't working? If the driver is actually driving a bus full of children only for two hours a day, how many hours does the driver get paid for? Is there health insurance?
I tried to get some of this information for a column I wrote about the strike earlier this week. A city department of education spokesman referred me to the private bus companies, and the bus companies I called were not forthcoming. But I'd hope that the Times — whose front-page article carries the name of five reporters — could do better.