NEW YORK TRANSIT
Will 33,000 workers be forced to strike?
By Milt
Neidenberg
New York
The contract between the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority and the 33,000 members of Transit Workers Union Local
100 expires on Dec. 15.
Local 100's fight for a decent contract is heating up. Will
the workers be forced to strike? The MTA is taking this
question seriously.
The transit workers' mood could be seen on Nov. 17 when they
and their allies took to the streets in a militant rush-hour
demonstration at MTA offices. Thousands clogged mid-Manhattan
streets as workers were on their way home and holiday shoppers
crowded into department stores nearby.
The union action sent a strong message to Wall Street and
the MTA that represents finance capital's interests. "We are
prepared to strike if we don't get a catch-up contract; a
contract not to be funded by give-backs," said one transit
conductor.
The MTA has accumulated huge surpluses over the last three
years, resulting from give-backs in previous contracts as well
as the horrific increase in productivity that threatens the
safety of workers and the lives of the over 6.5 million riders
they move every day.
On Oct. 7, the TWU put a package of 130 demands on the
table. These included a substantial wage increase, removal of
workfare from the contract, improvements in health benefits and
sweeping changes in disciplinary procedures. The package also
calls for changes in contract language--this includes
protection from discriminatory practices and health-and-safety
violations arbitrarily imposed by management.
Nearly a month later, MTA bosses responded with a set of
five counter-demands that they knew would be unacceptable to
the union. These included the right to assign workers to any
job for which they felt they were "appropriately trained."
This proposal would threaten job descriptions and security,
gut employees' rights spelled out in the Civil Service laws,
and downsize any worker to cut costs and increase
productivity.
It was a declaration of war against the union.
Anti-union law props up
MTA bosses
What makes the MTA so arrogant and contemptuous of the union
that its executives feel they can whip the 33,000 rank-and-file
bus and subway workers into line?
It is the fact that they have an anti-union, anti-worker law
on the state books that makes it illegal for public-sector
workers to strike.
And Wall Street, the financial center of the world, wants to
be sure transit workers and other unions won't shut city
transportation down.
In a strike, many millions of dollars--perhaps a trillion,
depending on the length of a strike--would go down the drain
for their transnational banks, global corporations, and many
other big business financial operations that need labor power
to make their profit system run.
This is exactly what happened on New Year's Day, 1966.
Thirty-five thousand members of the TWU, along with the
Amalgamated Transit Union, shut down 135 miles of subways and
2,200 hundred buses.
The strike's impact was felt around the world. Business
losses were enormous.
A settlement was reached on Jan. 13, after almost two full
weeks of the strike. TWU President Mike Quill and other union
officials who had been jailed were released as part of the
final agreement. Quill died a few days later.
The sympathy and solidarity for the transit strike was so
strong that union workers at a Catholic cemetery who had been
waging a militant strike against the powerful Cardinal Spellman
and his diocese opened their picket lines to allow the hearse
carrying Quill to enter the cemetery.
Before the Taylor Law, the law denying public-sector workers
the right to strike was called the Condon-Wadlin Act. The
language contained in this act was even harsher and more
repressive.
But it failed to intimidate the militant 1966 strike. And it
was replaced nearly two years later on Sept. 1, 1967. The New
York state legislature passed the "Public Employees Fair
Employment Act." The legislators claimed it was less vindictive
and threatening to the public-sector labor unions. They said
binding-arbitration procedures would replace the need to
strike.
It was a lie.
The legislation included, among other penalties, a two-day
loss of pay for each day on strike. This law is commonly known
as the "Taylor Law."
It still didn't stop the TWU from striking. On April 1,
1980, transit workers rallied at the Brooklyn Bridge and shut
down city transportation for 11 days. It cost the union $1.5
million in fines.
Bosses and state close ranks
There is much to be learned from these two strikes. There
must be careful and organized preparation to shut down New
York, the financial center of the world.
There must be a unity of purpose, discipline, stamina--and
much sacrifice, if the TWU is to win the economic and social
justice that has been denied the transit workers.
Other municipal unions--including State, County and
Municipal Employees District Council 37 that represents over
100,000 members, and the United Federation of Teachers--are in
negotiations with the city. A crisis could be in the making for
the racist, anti-union, anti-poor Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
It is time to for all these unions to unite in order to
fight together to overturn the infamous Taylor Law. This
victory can only be won through struggle in the streets of New
York.
Fearing a walkout, Mayor Giuliani has assembled a task force
that includes elaborate contingency plans to intimidate
strikers. He has appointed Jerome Hauer, who heads the Mayor's
Emergency Management Office, to lead the task force.
Hauer said his office "was working closely with the Police
Department, Fire Department, Department of Transportation, Taxi
and Limousine Commission, the Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey and surrounding counties."
Dec. 15 is the day the transit contract expires. Will the
public-sector unions unite to shut down the city? Will the
unions work closely with the oppressed communities that are
fighting the same oppressors as their multinational sisters and
brothers in the labor unions? Is a strike in the making?
The next two weeks will tell the story.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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