The 2005 New York Transit Strike: Post Mortem

A victory for New Yorkers!

TWU Local 100 called an end to the strike that had brought New York City to its knees for three days.

The work began as the 4 PM shift went to their jobs. Although the first buses did not appear on city streets for several hours, service was back to normal in time for this morning's rush, on the last business day before Christmas.

Thankfully, the city and its citizens were spared from even further economic damage due to this strike.

That is not to say that everything is back to being perfectly okay.

The city itself lost hundreds of millions, if not at least a billion, of dollars in revenue.

The transit union still does not have a contract. The negotiations will continue in private, so there will hopefully be no more public grandstanding during this process.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers lost money from this. Whether it was through having to pay more for alternate transportation or losing wages or commissions or sick/vacation days or small businesses losing sales due to a lack of customers, New Yorkers felt the wrath of the union leadership.

And finally, if that weren't enough, the use of the race card was employed.

Those who are saying race was a factor, that the union went on strike to say that they weren't being respected because of race, are looking for enemies that do not exist.

From the Times:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who called an evening news conference to blast Mr. Bloomberg, said in an interview: "How did we become thugs? Because we strike over a pension?"

"I do not think the language would have been used in a union that was not as heavily populated by people of color," he added. "And whether he intentionally did it or not, he offended a lot of people of color and he ought to address that, and come to the bargaining table."

How did any of this have anything to do with race? Yes, the union has more minority members than white members. But to say that the mayor only used that language because the union has that kind of membership is folly. Have you seen what the strike did to the city over those three days? Stick to running for president, Al.

There are a few that will continue to back the union by playing the race card.

The Daily Gotham noted that the punishments that the New York Daily News demanded Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg to impose on the union is but another "sly" attack on the black man. God forbid the newspaper ask the Governor and Mayor to ask the court to...carry out the letter of the law.

Furthermore, this post in The Daily Gotham says:

"Left-wing Latino and minority politicians better learn from this experience : You're not walking in the front door of the MSM. If you are a colored hatemonger like Michelle Malkin, that's one thing. If you are a Roger Toussaint talking about union rights and social justice, that's a whole different situation."

How is it any different? Because Toussaint gets to rail about the evils of the oppressors and somehow tries to connect an illegal strike over even more lucrative terms to Rosa Parks standing up to segregation?

The Daily Gotham goes on further:

"Labor unions had a good thing going there up until the 80s. Compromises like the Taylor laws, the union busting accelerated during the Reagan years and the WalMartization of blue collar jobs with the off-shoring of white collar ones have brought their years of brute force glory to an end. Unions, just like all of the left-wing grassroots, are going to have to learn to be more lithe, flexible."

This labor battle has nothing to do with a "WalMartization" of blue collar jobs or just because everyone is now hating unions. The Taylor Law was put in place so that public employees in New York State cannot do harm to those they are supposed to serve. Toussaint and the TWU Local 100 leaders knew exactly what they were getting into.

Is it that hard to debate the merits or demerits of the union's demands and the strike without having to throw around race to get everyone angry? Why couldn't this Daily Gotham writer act more like the Working Families Party did in their statement, carried by The Daily Gotham?

Just two posts below the racially charged post:

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Here is the Working Families Party take on the strike:

The Transport Workers are taking a beating in the press. They are an easy target for right-wing editorialists. And the Governor and the Mayor get to act macho and denounce Roger Toussaint and his members.

It’s true that the strike is a huge inconvenience. That’s the point of a strike. But you have to ask yourself – why would 38,000 men and women take the extreme step of walking off the job. The answer is, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a really lousy employer.

The press reports that the strike is about wages and pensions. And of course it is about both. But it’s also about the intangible quality of respect. If you talk to a bus driver or subway motorman, you constantly hear about how disregarded they feel by their employer. Had the MTA built a culture of respect and cooperation these last years, the atmosphere at the bargaining table might well have allowed for a settlement.

For the WFP, the choice is clear. However much we wish the subways and buses were running, we also know that sometimes people have to take a stand. Call the MTA, join a picket (see below), push back against the “they should be satisfied with what they’ve got” mentality (25 years underground, they deserve every penny).

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Speaking of the Daily News, columnist Errol Louis said "Bloomberg just didn't get it when it came to race in this labor battle.

Louis:

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday confirmed that he stood by every word of his televised outburst against the Transport Workers Union's leadership at the height of this week's strike. He called them "thuggish," "selfish," "frauds" and the like. A host of critics, such as state Sen. Kevin Parker of Brooklyn, now accuse the mayor of being racially divisive.

"We only need to look back to the day and time when MTA workers first gained the kind of pension and benefits which are now being called 'cushy.' The complexion of the union was sure of a different hue at that time," says Parker, the son of a transit worker.

"Now that the Transit Authority workforce is majority black and Hispanic, they are suddenly 'spoiled,' 'selfish' and 'overpaid,'" Parker says. "Are these colors of the race card too obscure to see? Not from my view."

State Senator Kevin Parker is now the authority on race and labor relations? Or was this just an opportunity to bring out the race factor? Of course, Kevin Parker doesn't have respect for the law as it is, so why should it matter that Toussaint and union leadership willingly broke the law?

Senator Parker's respect for the law, as posted on NYCivic in an article published in the New York Sun:

Which brings us back to the most recent arrogant embarrassment by Senator Parker. When a transit cop wrote him a ticket for blocking traffic in his home district, Mr. Parker allegedly crumpled it up and threw it back in the officer's face and punched him. When Mr. Parker tried to drive off, the cop stood in his path, prompting another altercation, according to witnesses. After being arrested with third-degree assault, and released from a precinct in Flatbush, Mr. Parker told reporters, "Nothing happened. This was a mountain out of molehill ... I was involved in a minor accident. People have traffic accidents," according to the New York Post. But most people don't assault police officers, even on our worst days, and most people aren't elected officials.

To make matters worse, there appears to be a track record of anger and abuse from Mr. Parker. A 13-year NYPD veteran, Marybeth Meyers, spoke on Saturday to the Daily News about an incident in December 2003, in which she witnessed one of Senator Parker's driving-related outbursts. After watching the senator cut off an elderly couple, nearly causing a collision, Detective Meyers said she got out of her car and was subsequently berated by the senator for questioning his actions. She recalls him saying, "I don't give a damn! There is nothing you can do about it, b----! Go f--- yourself!" All while standing outside of his car, bearing state Senate plates. This kind of knee-jerk bullying and thuggishness shows contempt for his office and for his constituents.

Louis goes on further:

Parker has a point. In August of 2004, when aggrieved members of the 91% white Fire Department of New York were protesting every public appearance by Bloomberg and threatening an illegal strike during the Republican National Convention, Bloomberg's spokesman, Ed Skyler, called the protesting firefighters "thugs." But Bloomberg himself took pains to not to repeat the slur, telling the New York Sun, "I wasn't brought up that way." And yet, when it came to the city's transit workers, the mayor's home training eluded him.

We'll never know what Mayor Bloomberg would have said if the firefighters' union had actually walked off the job. Bloomberg made his statement about union leadership after the Local 100 had already gone on strike. Comparing two different situations with different outcomes, noticing the differences, then crying "racist!" because of the differences is nothing more than an argument coming from someone looking to start a conflict over race from the start. It does nothing to aid the cause of the Local 100's demands, if that is indeed the cause they are fighting for.

Louis goes on to write about how a person had transformed her life after working in the MTA, how she went from a subway cleaner making $18,000 a year to a motor inspector making $50,000. That's wonderful, and certainly it took a lot of patience and work to get there. That would not go away, even if the final contract was everything the MTA wanted.

Louis further states:

Food stamps in the ghetto versus self-sufficiency, health care, a house in the suburbs and kids in college: For native New Yorkers, especially black New Yorkers, that's all this week's strike was ever about. It's why TWU chief Roger Toussaint risked fines and imprisonment and kept repeating the word "dignity" that so baffled and enraged Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki.

Why would it be especially so for black employees as opposed to employees of any other background? The MTA wouldn't suddenly put them in the poor house. The union needs to look at the realities of the financial situation and look at how good they would have it even under MTA demands. They have the right to negotiate for more (even if the raises they demanded are far higher than they may have hoped for in most other industries), but they do not have the right to hold a gun to the heads of people that have nothing to do with this labor squabble and deny them the right to pay their rent, heat their homes, or purchase gifts for the holidays.

Bloomberg was especially frustrated, letting it be known how much the union's actions have hurt the city, even though, unfortunately, Bloomberg has minimal influence in transit matters.

The TWU Local 100 toyed around with the lives of New Yorkers. They denied money to many, many others to make a statement on their own demands. If that is not greed, what is? The people of the city had to suffer for their actions, including many thousands of working, minority employees that are simply trying to pay their way through rent, for their children, to give a happy holiday to their family. They abandoned their brothers, of all races, for themselves. Finally, they abandoned the law and should not get any amnesty from the punishments that the law prescribes.

Where is the dignity in that?

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The City Council has been surprisingly quiet before, during, and after the strike. Though the game for those to become the next Speaker is undoubtedly still in play, there has been little activity from the Council (including Transportation Committee Chair John Liu). Perhaps the press was too busy covering Mayor Bloomberg and Roger Toussaint and their words, but the Council did not make its voice adequately heard.

In Backroom Deal Breaker: Deafening Silence!, a couple of commenters have noted that several Council members spoke, either for or against, but the overall silence, as the author notes, was deafening.

The same is true over at the New York Press where the absence of any real Council action was duly noted.

If the Council hopes to become a greater voice for the city, then it needs to step up and act! Granted, not all Council members will agree. But each Council member could do more to voice those opinions as well as represent their constituents. The offices of the Council itself as well as those for each member could have been valuable tools to assist New Yorkers with information and assistence for their communities.

It is a shame that the Council failed to show up during this mess.

Also largely absent was Governor Pataki, as was noted previously. Pataki only showed up at Rockefeller Center to make some statements and on CNN after the strike to make a few more statements. He wasn't present at any of the negotiations, even though he has far more influence than Mayor Bloomberg could hope to have under the current setup of the MTA. Though Albany has never cared much for the City, it seems that Pataki is no longer interested in fixing the problems of the state, including a massive problem in New York City, a city that provides so much in tax revenue to the state.

An even greater shame that Pataki was largely absent from this mess.

What is even sadder is that it appears that Toussaint could possibly call for another strike if the talks fall through, especially if a strategy to strike until the fines are waived is employed. The only reasonable expectation from Pataki would be that he actually show up and do his duty as the Governor.