08/14/2021
While it is per the policy of Occupy Tour NYC to refrain from directly weighing in on contemporary political disputes — certain exceptions, relative to the tourism industry, must be made when the livelihoods of the 99% are under attack; and tour guides are very much part of the 99%.
On August 7th, 2021, unemployed tour guides who relied upon working the double decker buses for their main source of income, staged a protest in Times Square, demonstrating against Big Bus, which upon the city reopening to tourism on July 4th — did not bring back any of their live tour guides, after letting all of them go last year, in the wake of the global pandemic. Not only did Big Bus do this in New York, but in every city where they run tour bus operations.
Our colleagues, who are licensed and trained professionals, who have spent tens of thousands of hours studying and researching everything that pertains to New York City — have been replaced with colorless, humorless, white washed, and outdated pre-recorded, audio tapes. At this time, no double-decker bus company in the city is employing live guides, with hundreds of workers currently displaced. However, Big Bus following this trend is most disappointing as the company once made it their priority to employ live (and unionized) tour guides to provide customers with the most optimal experience when riding about the city. Instead, Big Bus, has opted to run their buses without live guides, not lowering their price, and maximizing their profits from returning visitors and the advertisements they plaster on the sides of their buses — while diminishing the quality of the service they once so prided their company on providing to tourists.
With the absence of tour guides on the upper deck of the tour bus, visitors are at great risk to themselves and the tour bus operator. More often than not, riders unfamiliar with the terrain of New York, will hit their heads on traffic lamps and low hanging tree branches and endure through head trauma. In addition, they will also launch a myriad of questions at drivers (a majority who are Asian immigrants) distracting them from performing their job efficiently, and thus increasing the likelihood of vehicular accidents. Big Bus has decided to prioritize profit over safety.
In 2018, Washington Heights Council Member, Ydanis Rodriguez, introduced Bill 289-A, as measure to address the problems that have been aforementioned. Bill 289-A, specifically mandates that a tour guide, officially licensed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, (by law) must be on the upper deck of the tour bus. For three years this bill has been stuck in committee, as lobbyists have been paid by bus companies to prevent its passage. At a critical time, when hundreds of workers who live in New York City need their elected officials to act in the name of public safety and economic stability — they are failing to do so, and thus they are failing both their own constituents and visitors who come to take in all that New York has to offer.
Occupy Tour NYC, thus calls upon the locale of New York City: citizens, activists, journalists, workers, — in addition to tourists planning on visiting the city — to stand in solidarity with New York’s displaced double decker tour guides who have been locked out of their jobs in the wake of the pandemic, and to put public pressure on both Big Bus and elected officials to act immediately and see to it that our professional colleagues get their jobs back!
