Cabs are Scabs
Socialist Party Supports TWU 100
The Socialist Party of New York City strongly supports the right of transit workers to free speech, free assembly and free labor.
We denounce, in the strongest possible terms, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s callous disregard of the safety and health of transit workers, as well as their unending demands for for wage and benefit cutbacks. We are sickened by the slave plantation politics of Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki and Attorney General Spitzer, who would fine union members from two days’ wages up to a quarter of a million dollars each for the nerve of refusing to work without a contract.
As commuters, we recognize and appreciate the hard work and dedication of New York’s transit workers. As citizens, we voted in large numbers in favor of the state’s transportation bond act – expecting that some of the money we approved would go to fair and equitable pay increases for the workers who keep New York moving. As workers, we insist that if our brothers and sisters in TWU 100 go on strike, then we too will not go to work, or if we do WE WILL WALK.
Gene Russionoff Doesn’t Understand
Gene Russianoff, the grand poobah of the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Straphangers Campaign, is oft-quoted in the city’s media, and usually reliable for sensible good government critique. But Gene, apparently, doesn’t have a clue how unions work.
Responding in the Times to a City Council bill that recognizes that local unions are distinct political entities with their own agendas that are distinct from the larger federations to which they belong, Gene says, “It will allow the same decision-maker to make multiple contributions.”
I guess Gene’s opinion is skewed by how NYPIRG operates, where from Albany to Queens College to Stony Brook, the chapters carry the same message and work on the same campaigns: those that Gene decides. But in labor, while unity is the goal, the locals have their own goals and loyalties. For example, in SEIU, Local 1199 (health care workers) endorsed Freddy Ferrer while Local 32BJ endorsed Bloomberg. Obviously, SEIU President Andy Stern wasn’t “calling the shots” here.
The situation becomes even more complicated with mergers. The garment workers local 23-25 of UNITE HERE simply does not have the same political agenda as the hotel workers local 6 of UNITE HERE. The garment workers lobby to preserve special zoning for factories in the garment district. Without that special zoning, hotels would pop up in that valuable midtown district.
But the Campaign Finance Board, in interpreting the city’s campaign finance law, decided to consider all locals of the same international union one political entity and to cap their donations severely. The decision was an insult to labor and a threat to the integrity of the campaign finance law itself. Gene should do some more research.
The Strike at NYU
The strike at New York University is entering its second week. Local 2110 of the UAW represents graduate teaching assistants at the university, who organized a union to protest the fact that teaching assistants increasingly handle a huge workload of teaching, preparing coursework and grading papers and exams. The union won recognition from the university and a contract in 2002. It was the first of its kind, as the Clinton-appointed National Labor Relations Board had only recently ruled that graduate teaching fellows are “workers” under the law, entitled to protections under the law as a union.
As swiftly as those new rights were granted by the Clinton Board, they were taken away by the Bush Board, who ruled that teaching fellows are not “workers,” do not have a right to form a union and are not entitled to protection under the law from retaliation and discrimination. NYU, always looking to make and save money, simply decided to ignore its staff union and rebuff efforts to negotiate a successor contract.
Now, without a contract, and with no rights under the law, the graduate teaching fellows at NYU are on strike. They are asking tenured faculty to issue statements in support of the union, and to hold their classes off campus. They are asking students, parents, alumni and the public to call on NYU President John Sexton to recognize and negotiate with the union.
The union has daily noontime rallies and roving picket lines. I saw a very energetic picket line outside the Bobst library this evening. Just head to Washington Square Park, follow the noise and join in.