nettime NYC Transit Strike Article in Telepolis
It would be good to see support for the transit workers who are on strike. If there is any way to let others know about the strike that would be appreciated. Ronda - New York City Transit Workers Strike Against Cutback Contract Offer Lower Pension Benefits For New Hires Causes Strike by Ronda Hauben http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21627/1.html At 3:05 am on Tuesday, December 20, 2005, Roger Toussaint, the President of the New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) announced that the transit workers who operate the New York City buses and subways, were on strike. This is the first transit strike in New York City in the past 25 years. The last strike lasted 11 days and was in 1980. Toussaint said that the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which is in charge of the transit system, has a $1 billion surplus.(1) Yet the contract offer the MTA made provides little of a wage increase and is a contractual cutback in health and pension benefits, as new hires would be required to pay more for their benefits. An important issue that has caused the strike is that the MTA contract offer would pay new hires lower pension benefits. This is a strategy to divide the union and weaken it by creating a two tier system, with one set of workers having better benefits than another set. Also such a system provides a material incentive for management to harass older workers and to try to get rid of them, so as to replace them with lower paid employees. A serious grievance of transit workers is that they are already subjected to unjust disciplinary actions by management. This is a fight over whether hard work will be rewarded with a decent retirement -- over the erosion or eventual elimination of health benefit coverage for working people, said Toussaint. The President of the Transport Workers Union of American, the parent union of the TWU, is reported to have said he wasn't in support of the strike and that the union should return to the bargaining table instead of striking. Without a strike, though, workers felt there was not much of a reason for the MTA to change the hardball tactics they were using against the workers. Toussaint explained: The MTA knew that reducing health and pension standards at the authority would be unacceptable to our union. They knew there was no good economic reason for their hard line on this issue - not with a billion dollar surplus. They went ahead anyway. (2) Toussaint also noted that the Mayor and the Governor have encouraged the hardline tactics of the MTA rather than supporting a serious effort to settle the contract dispute. The Union initially asked for an 8% wage increase each year, but reduced that to 6%. But they were committed to maintaining the same pension benefits for new hires as for older workers. A small wage increase of 3%, 4% and 3-1/2% in the 3 years of the contract was offered but as the new hires would have to pay more for their pensions, this would effectively give them an even lower wage than other union workers. A rally was held on Monday in support of the transit workers. Some of the issues raised by transit workers as problems they have been faced with include the closing of toll booths and the reassignment of workers to cleaning and other chores, the large number of disciplinary actions against workers, and the proposal to eliminate the conductor on trains who is there to monitor what is happening with the train and the passengers. (3) The sentiment among union members in the city is that they are fed up with management insisting on 'givebacks' and continually cutting workers' wages and benefits. Other unions said they would do what they could to support the transit workers. There is a law called the Taylor Law which prohibits public employees in New York from striking. The MTA has gotten a preliminary injunction from the New York State Supreme Court that will allow it to impose large fines on the union, and fine each worker two days pay for each day they strike. Also Mayor Bloomberg has filed a lawsuit asking that the workers be fined $25,000 each day they strike. The transit workers feel that if they don't stand up for better working conditions when there is a surplus in the budget, that they will only be agreeing to ever worsening working conditions. The transit workers are in a stronger position than other workers in the city in terms of their ability to fight for better conditions. If they win the strike, that is a support for other workers in their fight for higher wages and better working conditions. If the transit workers agree to accept cutbacks in their benefits and even poorer working conditions, that encourages other employers to lower wages and benefits. Toussaint said that the transit workers did not want to strike. They had let the deadline for the strike on Thursday pass, and continued to try to negotiate. The response of the MTA, however, was to continue to demand
Re: nettime NYC Transit Strike Article in Telepolis
As a New Yorker, let me be the first to acknowledge that the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) made mistakes here: in decisions about what to do with its surplus; in the decision to offer riders discounts during the holidays instead of making other investments; and in the run-up to negotiations as a strike loomed. But as a New Yorker, and someone who generally supports labor activism, let me also say that: this strike is a mistake, and extremely misguided. The union's demands are unrealistic, particularly in an economic environment in which both pension and health care costs have been increasing dramatically, as is the case in the U.S. generally, and in New York in particular. Yes, the idea that there might be a two-tiered system is correct, were the union to agree to changes in benefits. Yet this is no different from any other situation in which a firm hires one employee under somewhat different terms than another. The firm that I work for once offered life insurance, but does no longer; but I don't resent my colleagues who joined at an earlier moment, which that benefit was still available. Situations change. The situation reminds me, in some ways, of the unrealistic attitude many Germans have -- that after 50 years of relatively cushy, post-War benefits, the system that allows early retirements and lush benefits is somehow immutable. Nonsense; why should it be that benefits cannot change when the economic and demographic circumstances that underpin those benefits also change? If nothing else, the increase in human life expectancy necessitates changes to a system that once offered 20 years of comfortable retirement and now must provide for closer to 30 or 40 years of retirement. Nor is it so absurd to ask that workers, if they wish to sustain this early retirement age, make an increased contribution towards their retirement funds. Moreover, as a taxpayer in this already-expensive city, the demands of the workers materially affect me. If costs go up, my ridership likely goes down, which will surely be the case across the city. The people who are hurt by these fare increases (as, indeed, they already are by the strike) are those who rely on public transit. Anyone who has visited NYC knows that the ridership on the system is diverse, but let's not kid ourselves that the restaurant workers and retail clerks have the same financial resources to take taxis to work that the stock brokers and lawyers might. The international union under which NYC's Local 100 Transit Workers Union sits specifically recommended against a strike -- because, towards the end of negotiations, the MTA returned to the table with a modified offer that conceded to much of what the union requested. Ongoing discussions should have been possible. That the union decided to go on strike anyway is a decision for which no one should be pleased or supportive. As a New Yorker, better support for the workers would mean more encouragement to return to negotiations, and to find a compromise both sides can live with. Sascha D. Freudenheim Doubt is humanity's best friend. For five years and counting: http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
