NYC Transit Workers are Right On

marjorie says...

I've been sitting here in East Texas for days now watching the news about the NY transit strike on television. Perhaps it all seems incredibly lopsided because I've been mainly getting snippets here and there from Fox (bleck!), but I've gotten some from CNN too. I kind of figure its pretty bad all over the corporate media.

Well, first, let me say that I am *very* happy the strike is over, for selfish reasons. I'll be going there next week for a little R&R (with a fellow m-gal) and wasn't relishing the idea of hoofing it all over the city. But I can assure all of you, our gentle m-pyre readers, that you would not have heard me saying the transit workers shouldn't strike. In fact, I applaud them for striking, and I don't even need to know all the ins and outs to say that. Why? Because I am PRO-UNION, and I do not think that such unity would have been displayed by 33,000 union employees if the stakes weren't high.

Watching the god-awful corporate media you'd think labor was evil incarnate--selfish bastards who couldn't care less about making sure the poor people of NYC get their Christmas shopping done. Which brings up another issue...the fact that our economy turns on things such as spending droves of money to commemorate the birth of Sweet Baby Jesus. Frankly, as much as I like giving gifts, I more and more think we should ban Christmas shopping--it epitomizes the subversion of spiritual life and social communion in our culture, not to mention most of the stuff is made in sweatshops. Which brings us back to the point: Labor.

If you listen to the corporate media, all you hear is that the transit workers were violating the Taylor Law, which is a law in New York banning strikes by public workers. What you *never* hear in the media, and I presume neither the Mayor (one of the wealthiest men on the planet btw) nor the Governor said it either, is that the Taylor Law also prohibits dealing with public employee pension plans during contract negotiations. Changes to pension plans are proposed to the state legislature and in the past they have been jointly crafted by the union and the MTA. In this case, essentially, the MTA was trying to cram rollbacks in the pension plan down the throat of the union in contract negotiations, which caused the breakdown. Meanwhile, the workers have been without a contract.

What we hear overwhelmingly in the media and from these rich white men running New York is how awful the strike is for New York. Rarely a word about the value of labor, although that is something that has been amply demonstrated. We hear a lot about the outrage of everyday New Yorkers, but very little from the rank and file, other than highlights of the "heroic" few with hearts of gold who crossed the picket line. In other words, the scabs. That's my perspective anyhow, from over here in East Texas, watching the news. But let's think about what really happened. A 33,000 person strong union decided to walk off the job during a week in which they surely knew they would be subject to heightened anger and condemnation. As I said, in my mind this shows the stakes are high and it shows incredible unity.

The strike is over and the pension point is unresolved. It could be that the workers go out on strike again. If it comes down to it, I hope that they do.

We live in a country with an increasingly decimated manufacturing base and a huge and growing gap between massive amounts of low-wage service workers and a well-to-do professional and entrepreneurial class. It would serve us all well to remember that our middle class is founded on a strong and unified labor movement. We owe labor a lot and in these moments we all owe them our loyalty. As a movement, labor is under attack. Despite all the faults and misplaced energy we might point to in union leadership, it still remains essential that we protect and enhance the right to organize, to have organized labor.

As for the corporate, for-profit media (Fox, CNN, etc.)...don't forget that Corporations by their very nature despise organize labor. Again, Corporate bosses are the enemies of organized labor. Plain and simple. It is simply outlandish to expect balanced and objective reporting from corporations when it comes to labor unions. That's just all there is to it.