Governor, mayor lead banks’ assault on New York’s workers

New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg have opened war on the millions in order to benefit the few. In response, elected union and rank-and-file leaders, community members, students, youths and immigrants will unite at a roundtable people’s war council to make plans to build a militant movement to defend the working class against this attack.

The Freedom Party and the South Bronx Community Congress are hosting this meeting at Hostos Community College in the Bronx on Jan. 29.

Federal, state and city governments, Democrats and Republicans alike, have nakedly taken aim at public jobs, pensions, unions, services and education. They are acting as security guards for the biggest banks and military profiteers.

The state budget of $111 billion and the city’s $63 billion come solely from the workers and belong to the people. These budgets should be adequate to fund every need. Cuomo and Bloomberg proclaim a budget deficit emergency, blaming public workers, retirees and unions; and cutting Medicaid, education and child care.

Their recent addresses omitted any mention of the real emergency: the need for a jobs program. Instead, they propose thousands of layoffs. There are 800,000 unemployed in New York state, of whom 360,000 live in the city, three quarters of whom are Black or Latino/a. About double that number would include all the underemployed and discouraged workers.

They also said nothing about the other emergencies: 100,000 evictions a year in the city, ongoing foreclosures, children in shelters and bare food banks.

Through their agents in the capitalist government, banks, real estate developers and insurance companies control the public treasuries. Banks paid scandalous bonuses to their officers from their record profits. But some $12.3 trillion from the Federal Reserve Bank was used to bail out those banks.

New York City and the state together owe $163.5 billion to banks. The state this year will pay banks $10 billion in triple tax-exempt interest, and the city will cough up $7 billion — 11 percent of the budget. The Board of Education, Metropolitan Transit Authority and Health and Hospitals Corporation will pay billions more.

Cuomo and Bloomberg flaunt their alliances with the Committee to Save New York and the Partnership for New York City (a merger with the Chamber of Commerce), which set policy. They are led by investment banker Felix Rohatyn and former President Bill Clinton’s secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin. Rohatyn is on the board of Lockheed Martin. Rubin, formerly of Goldman Sachs, was director of strategy for Citigroup, the largest investor in city bonds.

Rohatyn was the architect of the banks’ complete takeover of New York City in 1975, when city officials said they couldn’t pay interest to the banks. Under Rohatyn’s direction, control of every penny and every decision was placed under the dictatorship of the Emergency Financial Control Board and the Municipal Assistance Corporation. Rohatyn laid off 65,000 workers, doubled transit fares and instituted tuition at the City University of New York. Unions fought back but were ultimately overwhelmed, and $2.7 billion in union pension funds were turned over to pay the banks.

First, the banks get paid

State and city politicians passed laws conceding many budget decisions to these organizations. Before paying for other services, all state and city sales tax and personal income tax must, by law, go first to paying interest to the banks. A charter says the city must make interest payments before paying for a child’s education.

Another law hands all money from rent or sales of city property — $1 billion a year — directly to the real estate barons running the Economic Development Corporation. Since 1983 $1 billion a year in a sales tax on stock trades is returned to Wall Street. There’s much more.

Banks hoard trillions in their vaults but don’t invest in production or hiring because doing so doesn’t yield the rate of profit they demand. The capitalist crisis was due to overproduction. Workers are so productive they could provide prosperity for all — if they owned the means of production socially, and production weren’t for profit.

In private hands, production only occurs if the few owners can profit from it. There is nowhere to sell these goods for profit when hundreds of millions of people are unemployed. So the banks look to robbing the public coffers with a vengeance.

In his 1975 pamphlet, “The Crisis of the Cities and the System,” the late Workers World Party Chairperson Sam Marcy wrote:

“The banks are the central nervous system of the economic structure of the capitalist system. The ruling class is impelled more and more to overcome the crisis by shifting it onto the shoulders of the workers, Black, Latino, white — especially the poorest. The banks are in the vanguard of this offensive. That is what has to be realized and clearly understood. They are looking for the weakest link, where to aim an assault.

“The banks have naturally seized upon the finances of the large cities [and now small as well — GG] as their primary target. This is not hard to understand, a considerable number of IOUs in the vaults of the biggest banks are from municipal corporations ... with high interest on city bonds, and tax exempt.

“Any danger of depreciation in the value of these bonds ... immediately makes the city a target of attack. Through the city officialdom, the bankers can strike a blow at the living standards of those who work for the city and all who live in the city, particularly the mass of the workers and unemployed.”

In mounting a struggle against the government, we have to challenge the dictatorship of the banks and their attempt to bleed us dry. Capitalist politicians and others tell workers they cannot mess with this arrangement. But the class struggle under capitalism is always about what share workers get of the value their labor produces, in wages or services. No matter how much the bankers loathe letting one cent go to the people, the people are the vast majority and have power through their struggle.

We need to expose the truth to the widest audience possible through street visibility, meetings and literature. A Peoples Budget Investigation can be launched and can present its report at a mass citywide Peoples Assembly, which can vote on action.

There are many protests already planned in New York City. Students, parents and teachers plan protests against assaults on education, with month-long actions in March. There is the tremendous struggle of the Woodlawn cemetery workers, the Local 808 teamsters, actions against layoffs and racism, the April 9 anti-war mobilization and more, that we can help build support for.

We can bring it all together on May 1 in Union Square, combining it with the heroic immigrant workers’ urgent demands into a class-wide militant action uniting all who are genuinely and fearlessly willing to fight on the side of the people.