Is the NYC cabdriver strike successful? It’s hard for me to say. The only time that I spend in Manhattan these days is a few minutes underground, switching from the Long Island Rail Road to New Jersey Transit on my way to Rutgers. The Taxi Workers Alliance, which called the strike over a city mandate that yellow cabs install credit card machines and GPS systems, claims that 80% of the city’s cab drivers stayed home. Mayor Bloomberg is pooh-poohing the extent of the job action. Strolling around Greenwich Village tonight, I saw exactly three cabs when I would normally see dozens more.
It’s easy to shake one’s head in confusion over the cause of the strike. What’s wrong with providing more consumer service, you may ask? Isn’t this fear of GPS a wee bit paranoid? Keep in mind the precarious position of most cabbies. They are not employees (and the Taxi Workers Alliance is not, in the strictly legal sense, a union). Through a bit of administrative sleight of hand, they are “independent contractors.” They pay the Boss (usually some company with enough capital to buy a fleet of cars and TLC medallions at tens of thousands each) for the privilege of “leasing” a cab. The cab companies are guaranteed their profits. The cabbies have to pay for gas and often repairs. When gas prices spike, cabbies take a pay cut. If a credit card reader breaks, the cost of repair will be tacked on by the Boss to the cabby’s “rent.” It’s a shitty, miserable existence that calls out for serious reform. In that light, the cabbie strike can be seen as a demonstration of frustration. If, indeed, 80% of the city’s cabs are off the streets for the next two days and work-a-day life in New York is upset enough to be remembered then, whatever the goals of the strike, the Mayor and TLC will give greater thought to the impact on cab drivers of their policies in the future.
More power to the cabbies, who have a pretty impressive organization, run by word of mouth and impromptu meetings at the taxi stands at the airports and train stations, and all places where cabbies gather, rest and refuel.
The strike reminds me of a story I’ve wanted to tell. Almost exactly three years ago, my dear friends and trusted co-workers at the union where we all worked formed a staff union, which was promptly busted. The whys and wherefores are not worth getting into now. These things happen. Shortly before the whole affair came to its inexorable conclusion, a few of us met (in Greenwich Village, actually) to try to figure out if there was any way we could salvage the situation. I was middle-management and excluded from the whole thing, so this had been the first time I had really spoken to two of my very good friends, Alan and Jacob, who were leaders of the staff union campaign, since the deal went down. We were joined by our beloved revolutionary sweetheart, Liz, who had actually quit the job and moved down to Washington, D.C. some months before and was in town for some reason or another.
Over sushi and Sapporo, we rehashed the series of decisions and events that brought us to the precipice of a complete staff meltdown (we still do this from time to time), and slowly a sense of fatalism fell over the whole depressing evening. Liz and I shared a cab back to Penn Station and the Long Island Rail Road. In the back seat, we commiserated over our disillusionment over how this organization, this labor union, that we loved and believed in could conduct a nasty union-busting campaign against its own employees that was so against our principles. As we talked, our cabbie held a conversation on the two-way radio. He had a thick Haitian accent and his voice was low, hushed and mellifluous – clearly intended to fade into the background and be unnoticed by his passengers. But here and there, Liz and I picked up on scattered words in between our own. “Power,” “money,” “the boss,” “the workers.” When he said, “They have all these cars but they can’t drive these cars themselves,” Liz and I looked at each other with a mix of terror and delight. We were overhearing an organizing conversation. The driver on the other end of the two-way radio conversation was getting cold feet about whatever job action they were planning, and our driver – the organizer! – was reassuring him and getting him back on the program.
“Of all the cabs we could have gotten into,” Liz grumbled. I took more pleasure in the experience and said something like, “The movement keeps rolling.” We sat in silence for the final five or six blocks and listened to our cabbie do his thing. At the MSG station entrance, we pooled our cash for the fare and a more-generous-than-usual tip. Liz handed the man his money and leaned over to say in an even, firm and warm tone, “You’re a very good organizer. Good luck.”
We got out of the cab and I said, “I’m going to write about this one day.” A sardonic smile crossed her face. “At least we got that out of it.”