Everyone's Strike

    Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, appeared before the microphones at the union hall last night almost three hours after the strike deadline of midnight (which means that all the newspapers are out of date today in terms of info--you're best bet is to go to New York 1). In announcing the strike, he reiterated the failure of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which is swimming in a one billion dollar surplus, to move off a proposal that would have instituted a two-tier wage system and forever leave future workers behind, particularly in terms of pension rights.

    So, if the riding public is looking for a reason to rally behind the workers, it's this: the workers are willing to endure hardship and lost wages so they can protect the economic futures of those people who aren't even working in the transit system. That's an admirable step, even if a billionaire mayor can't grasp the concept.

    And that stand is one that will have an effect on the tens of thousands of other public employees who will be targets down the road for the same negotiating ploy--undermine the livelihood of future workers by assuming that current workers won't put their own livelihood on the line for people they don't even know. In preparing his members for a strike, and making it clear what's at stake, Touissant has shown, in my opinion, remarkable leadership.

    On the other side, you have the MTA. It is striking to me that the entire MTA negotiating leadership, starting out with it's chairman Peter Kalikow, is white, while the membership of the union is probably 75 percent black and Hispanic. I don't think these MTA guys would have been inclined to take the firefighters or police unions to the mat.

    There was a bit of tension last night as the deadline passed. A source told me that the union's board had voted to strike--but its international parent union had refused to authorize the strike. Toussaint made it clear he was going to authorize the strike whether the International union approved or not, and, at least for now, the international officers do not seem poised to try to take over Local 100. 

    The internal union politics between Local 100 and the International are a mixture of race and political turf. The three top officers of the International are white men, and its president, Mike O'Brien, is the successor to Sonny Hall, who came out of Local 100 which he ruled for many years in a less than democratic fashion. There is no love lost between Hall's faction and Toussaint--and one insider speculated a scenario where Hall, behind the scenes, might have orchestrated the lack of support for the strike.

    What struck me while watching the press wait impatiently for Toussaint to appear was that most of them seem annoyed that they were put out and missing their deadlines. With the exception of a few like Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News and Tom Robbins of the Village Voice, most of the reporters are pretty uninformed about the history of the union and the currents at play.   

 

Comments

[Adam Terando]

re: reporters uninformed about history

That's because most reporters are uniformed about everything. They are generalists at best and stenographers at worst.

I didn't hear one comment on the news this morning (Esp. from that liberal bastion, NPR) concerning how the MTA was acting illegally by insisting on pension changes in any final contract
. But I did hear several times how the union was acting illegally.
Lazy lazy reporters.

[Jan Cornell]

I get the NY stations and they are demonizing the workers. Going on and on about how illegal it all is, how they have to go to court at 11:00 today blah blah blah. Then in some real grandstanding Bloomberg walked across the Brooklyn bridge with people trying to get in to work. One official said the workers should be punished and punished hard because of this.
Guess we'll find out who blinks first. I have a huge amount of respect for TWU for walking. For standing up and saying NO. We're not taking your bullshit contract offer.

[Reece Chenault]

"For standing up and saying NO."

Right on.

And if you guys in NY are reading this today, my boys and I at Activist Haven are with you all the way. We're all former organizers and members here, and we say you leave em beating their feet till someone recognizes how important you are to the system.

No deal, no work.

[Carl]

I suppose it's unsurprising, but some prick from Forbes is pretty pissed about having to take a cab this morning.

http://www.forbes.com/home/columnists/2005/12/20/transportation-unions-strikes_cx_daa_1220comment.html

He calls the union contract "one of the most outrageous pay and benefit packages in the nation."

Below is a letter I just shot off to his editor.

David Andelman's "martian" column today about the transit strike in NYC had one of the most simulataneously hilarious and nauseating lines I've read all year. Talking about the pay and benefits package of transit workers, Andelman referred to them as "... what has to be one of the most outrageous pay and benefit packages in the nation."

Apparently Andelman hasn't read noted liberal Ben Stein's most recent column, where he decries Delphi CEO Steve Miller's executive compensation plan where the top 600 executives who ran the company into bankruptcy would share in $150 million in bonuses, while hourly workers who actually built the company into a viable business in the first place are asked to take a paycut from an average of $25/hr to $10hr. That sounds like a heckuva lot more outrageous pay and benefit package to me.

I would say that the fact that NYC is apparently losing $400 million a day due to lack of mass-transit shows how important these workers are to the city. Maybe they should be paid for it? I'd also like to hear what David Andelman's pay and benefit package is - to see whether it is commensurate with the quality of the drivel spewing out of his keyboard.

Carl

[Hal]

I applaud TWU Local 100 for having the strength and guts it takes to do what they are doing. At The rally on the evening of 12/19/05 @ 3rd Ave, there were representatives from Metro North who said they would stand by their brothers and sisters. I find it disheartening that Metro North will now be picking up passengers in the Bronx thus undermining the strike. If the workers of Metro North who are without a contract now for 3 years walked out, then maybe the MTA and Mr. Kalikow would start to negotiate a fair and reasonable contract for all MTA employess. This strike is key for labor negotiations in all sectors. We need to strongly support TWU and their members.

[baffled]

ah: brilliant logic. a white power structure is oppressing minority workers, and the strike represents the workers' laudable stab at self-empowerment.

except that most of the small businessmen ruined by this strike are also minorities. they've got a far weaker voice than the TWU. how come they don't count? how come you're so willing to sacrifice their livelihood?

--baffled ex-WFP member

[unconvinced]

Sadly, the link Carl posted as an example of outrageous reporting frankly exhibited more logic than anything I've seen on this page. Thanks for giving me a link to the quantitative analysis I was looking for amongst this mass of unchallenged drivel based solely on pre-existing bias.

Though Carl is right to condemn the Delphi executive compensation scandal, his timing is off: the subject is the 38,000 TWU and the 7 million New Yorkers' livelihoods they're using as blackmail, not Miller's rephrensible corporate scavenging. Rant on Miller in another column, and I'll be happy to support you. But to include it in the argument here is misleading, illogical, and naive; as every child knows from age three, two wrongs don't make a right.

[jack]

well said, unconvinced. i've been looking for an intellectually honest argument for the strike all night and i've only found kneejerk politics at best and dishonesty at worst.

[aenglish]

baffled & jack-

If you only support strikes that don't inconvenience anyone, then you won't support many strikes, and certainly not any effective winning ones. Remember the UPS strike? It was effective, inconvenienced a lot of people, and received a lot of broad public support. And the strikers won.

[zahke]

Here is an intellectually honest argument for you: All workers have the right to collectively withold their labor. Period. If they don't have this right, then they don't truly have the right to collectively bargain.

[Phil]

they're pitting workers against workers. all people deserve jobs with decent (not just livable) pay and reasonable job security. with all the unearned wealth (dividends, interest, capital gains, etc.) that billionaires are constantly stealing from the labor of working people and from the natural resources of our earth, this is easily affordable. creating decent paying public sector jobs is a good way of creating this kind of employment (and ideally full employment).

the problem is that local governments usually rely on regressive local taxes (fares, property taxes in a housing bubble, sales tax, etc.) that burden the working poor and working middle class the most.

so does this mean we should deny the transit workers (whose work the city depends on) their bit of hard earned middle-class prosperity? no. that's what the plutocrats want us to think, "oh, life sucks hard for so many working people, their wages are good enough, those laid-off GM workers would kill for that kind of pension plan." no, that's small potatoes thinking.

we need to take off our blinders and realize that there is plenty of wealth to reward the work of all working people, and the bulk of that wealth is every day redirected to the superwealthy (the fraction of the richest 1% who own more wealth than the bottom 95%). this means the blame falls upon our politicians (mainly the Republicans) who are shifting the tax burden onto working people. shame bloomberg, pataki, and most especially Bush and Congress. Fully fund our infrastructure and schools! Tax the superwealthy!

[Carl]

Frankly $63,000 a year with decent benefits seems pretty low for people who hold the lives of 7 million riders a day in their hands. My point with that quote is that it is obscene that we are calling 40-60 grand a year jobs, with paid healthcare and steady raises, outrageous. You know what's outrageous? When the people getting screwed in this country are persuaded by dipshit columnists arguing that says these workers average salaries are clearly out of line... if you "[t]ake out Wall Street, where mega-bonuses skew the average unfairly."

Carl

[jack]

zahke: this is your intellectual honesty? advocacy of an absolute right of all workers to strike? you can't mean this. otherwise you're saying that police dept., fire dept., and so on could strike, but the consequences would be terrible.

[theo]

aenglish, i think you need to reread baffled's post. he/she's pointing out that you can't say "support the TWU and support hardworking minority workers" because the strike is putting other minority workers out of business.

neither baffled nor jack said anything about "inconvenience." come on, let's consider posters' points and have a discussion.

[theo]

i'd like to take up baffled's point, actually. why is it that none of your pro-TWU arguments consider the damages to small businessmen? the strike isn't merely "inconveniencing" people -- it's putting people out of business.

[madball]

I really want these guys to win, but it seems that winning, or at least not completely losing, the war for hearts and minds is that much more important in a strike like this, where the downside is so obvious to the public. Someone brought up the UPS strike as being inconvenient, but to the concentrated mass of New Yorkers this is ten times more of a pain in the ass.

To that end, if anyone here knows much about what 100 is doing to get their ideas out in a clearly hostile media environment (how many papers carried the photo of Bloomberg walking over the bridge? I know the "liberal" Denver Post did) I'd love to hear more about it....

[janinsanfran]

The most interesting coverage and discussion I've seen of the strike has been at Steve Gilliard's newsblog.

[r]

I think the strike is great. Workers have a right to withhold their work to force better conditions. Without this there is nothing for them to do but sit and take anything. The Taylor law places all the burden on them and does not restrict the other side in any way. It is unfair. If the city and the MTA are so concerned about the economic impact on the city then they should be more than willing to meet demands that over three years amount to what it will cost for two days of cop overtime during the strike.

[Blakeney]

As I understand it, the contract prohibits this union from striking. They all signed it - or at least agreed to it when they joined the "collective". Therefore, the union is in breach of the contract, and every last one of them should be fired and replaced by people who are willing to honor their written agreements.

This isn't about whether or not you believe $40-60K/year is a "living wage", or whether these people provide a valuable service. Regardless of your opinion, those kinds of debates are all irrelevent socialist bullshit, that has been discredited around the world for the last century. It's about agreeing to a deal and honoring it. This is precisely why this provision is in the agreement. If it "doesn't matter", then how can unions complain when companies restructure their pension plans or try to disregard other provisions in their contracts? Nobody put a gun to any individual in this union's head and forced them to take the job.

Nearly 25 years ago, Ronald Reagan showed the air traffic controllers the consequences of not living up to your agreements, and I see no reason why we shouldn't teach these guys the same lesson.

[francesca]

Where is the rest of the NY labor community??? The silence is deafining (and no, Dennis Rivera's speechifying does not count). Where are the masses of workers from 1199 or AFSCME who will feeling these cuts next? Blakenly raises one important point in that vitriolic posting: We are watching history repeat itself. I was a baby during PATCO, but as an activist now I see how it was a defining moment with reprecussions that working Americans have never recovered from.

To Blakeney I ask: Does the law demand I relinquish all freedom of association when I place my signature on a piece of paper? Blacks in the South also were told to abide by social "contracts" (vis-a-vis the law) but chose to engage in civil disobedience. Alternatively, for the thousands of Americans who watch their wages and pensions disappear each week to due managerial mismanagement, what about those "contracts"? If a Beth Steel worker is forced to take on a new job at the age of 65 (after decades of backbreaking work) because the PBGC won't pay the benefits he was CONTRACTUALLY due, where is the hammer of the law then? I would suggest that your adherence to the "four corners of a contract" is as irrelevant as the "socialist bullshit" to which you refer in your tirade.

[Blakeney]

To Francesca: I support courts that uphold individual property rights and ALL contracts, whether they exclude the right to strike, or include pension guarantees.

To me, it's a fundamental issue about not changing the rules in the middle of the game. Of course, liberals love to do this - witness Al Gore's endless vote counting (re: vote manufacturing) during Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the rules clearly stated that only ONE electronic recount was mandated by law if the election was within a certain margin, not to mention the dates for certification which were written into law to protect both sides in an election.

What the union is saying is "if I can't get what I want in the contract, I'll take what I can get now, and ignore the no-strike provision and hold the City hostage later". Again, classic liberalism parallel to using the courts to get what you can't get through legistlation.

That will begin to end when Alito is confirmed. For me, this isn't just about this strike (I don't even live in, or like, New York). It's about the larger issue of fairness, and living up to your commitments, even if you don't like them the next day.

PS: The union is doomed to lose. Where I live, in PA, the state toll workers went on strike over T-Giving last year and caused a whole lot of non-union member people a whole lot of grief. The people never forgave them, and their strike collapsed shortly after.

[Peter H]

Blakeney....There is no provision in the MTA Contract prohibiting the transit workers striking, so stop ranting about the TWU changing the rules in the middle of the game. You're confusing the Taylor Law with the MTA Contract.

[Bill Pearson]

Hey Blakeney take a hike, your attitude is the same shit we have been listening to from employers who have been screwing us for years. More crap from those who have it all.

Great question Francesca; where is the rest of institutionalized labor? Time to stand up guys or forever doom yourselves to being a bunch of politicians' butt boys unable to do anything but collect your outrageous salaries.

SHUT THE FRIGGING CITY DOWN...it's nice you know the words to Solidarity Forever...how about trying to live it.

[Kevin F Droste]

I agree Bill. As history shows us, it was not the act of failing to move to the back of the bus by Rosa Parks that made the difference, it was the support she received immediately from the people of Montgomery, AL, and then the support across the nation. The strike is not the be all and end all of this situation. What happens once this is resolved, be it a union win, or a management firing of all TWU members, the actions of the rest of labor and the citizens of NYC will tell the story for future generations. No one would remember the name of Rosa Parks if it was not for the actions of the rest of the affected citizens of Montgomery. Now is the time for labor in NYC to act collectively to let the city see that if you try to screw the TWU, you will have to deal with teachers, uniformed services, and the rest of labor. There is no time like the present, and no place like here to start the war.

[John Halle]

I agree that history is being made here and we need to figure out whatever we can do as individuals and collectively to influence events in the direction they need to go.

Any ideas along these lines?

Also, one other question: it was mentioned before the strike that it was possible that Metro North employees who have been without a contract for three years might go out in sympathy, but they haven't done so.

They're doing so would completely shut the city down. What's holding them back?