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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb.1, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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The striking building-service workers in New York are up against the richest landlords on the planet. Much of the wealth of the U.S. ruling class is still in Manhattan real estate.
For example, Metropolitan Life--the biggest insurance company in the United States--is a big New York landlord.
Among Metropolitan's assets--$164.9 billion in 1994--is the former Pan Am building. This 830-foot-tall skyscraper built on top of Grand Central Terminal has 2.4 million square feet of rentable space.
That's 55 acres of offices to collect rent from in just one building.
Big insurance companies like Metropolitan serve as huge accumulators of capital for financial groups like the Rockefellers. They and the banks are responsible for much of the racially segregated housing in the United States.
Thousands of people live in the Metropolitan-owned Stuyvesant Town housing complex in Manhattan. When this was built after World War II, Metropolitan insisted on a "whites-only" covenant in the leases.
For years anti-racists tried to sublet their apartments to African American families. Every time sheriffs would evict the tenants on the basis of race.
Metropolitan's housing apartheid officially continued until New York City passed an "open housing" law in 1957.
Another big player in Manhattan real estate is the Astors.
Bankers Trust--with assets of $14 billion--was originally called Astor Trust.
The Astors made their fortune by robbing Native people in the fur trade. Later they invested their loot in New York City--becoming the biggest slumlords in Western Hemisphere.
Today many of their tenements have been torn down for office buildings. And today that's where you can find striking members of Local 32B-32J picketing, day and night, fighting to defend their right to a decent wage.
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