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NEW YORK

Public employee struggle -- just the beginning

By Mary Owen

New York

The general consensus among labor activists here is that New York's 33,000 transport workers, from many different nationalities, waged an inspiring and courageous contract struggle against tremendous odds.

The members of Transport Workers Local 100 turned out in the thousands for rallies and mass union meetings. And in the days before a tentative agreement was reached Dec. 15, they showed their iron determination--slowing New York's massive subway and bus system by sticking to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's rulebook.

The transit workers are now voting on the tentative contract. But one of their main achievements is already clear: They set the stage for the coming year of public-employee contract struggles in New York.

A Dec. 16 Christian Science Monitor article headlined "Subway standoff shows workers' rising fortunes" called the tentative transit pact "a testament to a somewhat renewed vigor in the labor movement."

And that renewed vigor will make itself shown as the public employees who keep New York running--including many women, workers of color, immigrants and lesbian/gay/bi/trans workers--head into their Contract 2000 struggles.

The transport workers' struggle was the first of what will be a series of public-employee struggles here over the next year. It was the groundbreaker.

Next come the Teamsters, representing workers in New York's sprawling Housing Authority projects.

In March, the city's contract with 125,000 workers in District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal employees expires.

The city's contract with 80,000 United Federation of Teachers members expires in November.

Along the way, city pacts with other workers--doctors, interns and residents, administrative workers and others--will end.

Mobilizing the rank and file

On May 12, 1999, a demonstration of 60,000 workers from many different unions filled Broadway near City Hall at a protest called by the AFSCME D.C. 37 and other city-employee unions. This was an opening shot in building solidarity among New York workers.

With that protest the workers let the government and Wall Street know it's payback time for two years with no raises. It was the biggest labor protest in over a decade. The protest also drew many private-sector workers along with public employees.

Several months later came the transit workers' struggle.

In both cases, rank-and-file workers came forward and got involved. There will surely be more of this rank-and-file involvement as public-employee contract struggles unfold.

D.C. 37's Contract 2000 Campaign is a case in point. Since May, there have been two huge shop-steward meetings that drew over 1,000 rank-and-file leaders. Shop ste wards were asked to sign cards pledging to mobilize members and participate in work-place activities around Contract 2000.

In addition, a bargaining survey went out to D.C. 37's 125,000 members in the union's newspaper. Thousands of returns came in. There was such a demand for the questionnaire that the union ran out of papers and had to reprint the forms.

D.C. 37 has also added a 300-person Bargaining Caucus to advise the Bargaining Committee. Similar activities are undoubtedly going on in the other city unions.

Public employees will be up against the same line up of class forces as the transit workers were. Only this time Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will represent the ruling class directly at the bargaining table. And he's getting ready.

Right after his heavy-handed, police-state repression against transit workers, Giuliani told city unions to forget about a double-digit raise. He said the MTA contract was "too rich" for the city, would cause "significant deficits," and so on.

Never mind the $2 billion-plus city surplus generated by the workers, and by the super-exploitation of workfare workers. Never mind the big boom on Wall Street.

But municipal unions weren't buying it.

"Every settlement has an impact," said Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. She also chairs the Municipal Labor Committee, a coalition of 75 public employee unions representing 325,000 workers.

"None of us is operating in a vacuum. It's going to have some kind of impact," said D.C. 37 Administrator Lee Saunders of the transit pact.

City unions would be further ahead if they had gotten behind TWU sooner and more solidly. A united showing of labor would have been harder for Giuliani--acting on behalf of Wall Street--to repress.

This kind of unity and determination will have to develop as this year of contract struggles unfolds.

A valiant example

Nevertheless, transit workers set a val iant example. And the coming city workers' struggles take place at a time of increased labor activity generally. The Taxi Drivers' Alliance refused to scab on a transit workers' strike. And there could be more struggles ahead for these oppressed workers.

Immigrant and anti-sweatshop organizing is continuing. Mexican workers, UNITE and the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union are battlefronts in these struggles.

Workfairness, an organization of workfare workers and supporters, recently held a lively membership meeting to prepare for activities for the spring. The workfare issue was unresolved in the transit talks; it could be an issue in city contract struggles, too.

In addition to all this, labor and other activists continue to digest the lessons of the anti-WTO battle in Seattle.

The media revealed--to their amazement--that there was a lot of public support for the transit workers. Such support will have to be organized for the coming labor battles.

Strikes and struggles open the workers' eyes. They reveal the class forces, expose the role of the police and the courts as repressive defenders of capitalism, and show the bankruptcy of the capitalist media.

And, with slowdowns and job actions like those carried out by the transport workers, they also reveal the potential power of the workers when they decide to move. The transport workers' struggle was just a taste of things to come, and a clarion call for revolutionaries to be ready.

Copyright © 1999 workers.org