NYC transit strike was world news

From Qatar to Morocco and Angola, in India, China and Japan, throughout the Caribbean and across Europe and Canada, press services and newspapers covered the transit workers’ strike by TWU Local 100 in New York City.

Reports ranged from sympathetic in the progressive journals—which exposed the racism of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the injustice of the Taylor Law that makes public service strikes illegal—to dismissive and hostile in some of the pro-business European press.

The Gleaner, the major paper in Jamaica, proclaimed TWU 100 President Roger Toussaint “person of the year” for his struggle to defend the rights of his members.

Everybody’s magazine, based in Brooklyn and oriented to the Caribbean community there, also felt Toussaint should be recognized as “person of the year” because “by waging an honorable battle to maintain workers’ hard-won pension and other benefits Toussaint and the Transport Workers Union demonstrated that they are keeping alive the best traditions of the American labor movement.”

Everybody’s continued, “We applaud Roger Toussaint for the dignified way he conducted himself during the 54-hour strike, his principled approach, his oratory and his effective communication of the transit workers’ demands.” The article saluted Toussaint “and the selfless, valiant workers of the Transport Workers Union” for standing up for the rights of today’s workers and the next generation of workers by “resisting pension givebacks and the erosion or elimination of workers’ health-benefit coverage.”

The magazine concluded, “Indeed, our person of the year is charting a course that we hope labor leaders throughout the nation will emulate.”

France’s Le Monde, one of the major papers there, featured the strike on its front page with a photograph.

Much of the coverage in newspapers around the world made the following points: This was the TWU’s first strike in 25 years, launched in the face of heavy fines. The strike was solid and shut the system down. And passengers and other workers in New York expressed a significant amount of support for the strike, even though it caused them a great deal of inconvenience.