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NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006Workshop TalksWorkers battling for the next generationby Htun Lin Just before Christmas, 33,000 New York City transit workers went on strike, shutting down the country’s largest public transportation system for the first time in 25 years. Workers rejected management demands to cut pensions for future workers. Also in dispute was the city’s demand to have workers pay for part of health care premiums. The city’s proposed two-tier pension system puts its budgetary crisis on the backs of workers, especially future workers. In spite of the threats to arrest union leaders and million-dollar-a-day fines imposed by the courts, transit workers prevailed in their principled stand against any kind of two-tier system. SAME FIGHT, DIFFERENT STRUGGLE This strike reminded me vividly of our own eight-week strike in 1986 at Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s oldest and largest HMO. Management assured us then that existing workers were not going to be impacted, but in fact would be rewarded with bonuses, as soon as we voted in a new contract which included a 30% wage cut for future workers. We knew then, as New York transit workers clearly know now, accepting such a proposal meant the beginning of the end of our union by creating divisions between workers old and new. It was not for our own immediate gain that we all stayed out for as long as we did, but to preserve solidarity with future workers. It is no accident that the New York transit workers union, comprised primarily of minorities and immigrants from places like the Caribbean, is so concerned about the welfare of future workers. I know, as a son of immigrants, the many sacrifices my parents endured in order to provide a better future for their children. Many immigrant families came to America, or elsewhere, for the benefit of future generations. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City called the predominantly Black and minority workers thugs, just as the French interior minister in Paris had called children of Arab and North African immigrants scum. TWU President Toussaint responded to the Mayor by asking, "You tell me how many thugs you know who wake up at three in the morning to make sure the trains run on time." Bloomberg’s racist demagoguery comes in a climate of politicians playing on fears in a post September 11 world. Workers standing up for their rights has now become, in his words, “irresponsible" and “selfish." He insinuated that the strike was an attack on New York. BLUDGEONED WITH ‘NATIONAL SECURITY’ We have seen that much of the new obsession with national security has very little to do with any real security, but is, instead, used to attack immigrants. It is also another way to force management’s takebacks down our throats. West Coast dockworkers experienced this in 2002 when port owners had locked them out. Bush invoked a Taft-Hartley injunction to force them back to work on management’s terms. West Coast dockers have always been very active, not just with their own immediate interests, but in supporting other workers’ struggles internationally. Bush personally intervened in the dockworkers’ struggle because that local labor dispute had the potential of bringing global commerce to a halt. He used the club of “national security" to defeat the dockworkers’ strike even after they agreed to leave the picket lines only to load military cargo related to Bush’s war in Iraq. For capitalists, security means providing stability for the free flow of commodities at all costs, specifically at the cost of workers’ health and welfare. Where’s the security when workers like those in a West Virginia coal mine were allowed to die in a preventable accident because the government didn’t enforce existing safety regulations? They allowed the coal company to continue operating while accumulating hundreds of citations for safety violations. We are fighting for real security by trying to tear down barriers that capital puts up to restrict free movement to immigrate to improve the lot of our families. Another barrier is the one between generations in the form of a two-tier work place. The New York transit workers risked a strike in the face of tremendous legal pitfalls to combat management’s proposed two-tier conditions. The firmest international solidarity is required to overcome capitalism’s barriers. |
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