Key to a Winning Fightback – a Transit Worker-Rider Alliance

Key to a Winning Fightback –

a Transit Worker-Rider Alliance

Local 100 Fightback member T/O Juan Cruz at2018 protest against booth closings in Brooklyn.

Divide-and-conquer. It’s the oldest trick in the book and Governor Cuomo, along with the MTA’s bosses, have turned to it with a vengeance in preparation for their contract negotiations with transit workers.

A week before Local 100’s contract was set to expire Cuomo and the MTA triggered a media frenzy by going to the media and alleging, without any evidence, that workers were “stealing” from the public by fraudulently claiming overtime. At the Long Island Rail Road, whose union workers’ contract has also expired, the MTA even ordered police to monitor workers clocking in and out!

The truth is that overtime has increased as management has broken its promises to increase hiring and is pushing us harder than ever to make the decrepit system run.

For a United Struggle with LIRR Workers!

The fact that LIRR workers are also without a contract and that we are both facing attacks from Cuomo and the MTA points to the potential and need for Local 100 to unite with the LIRR workers’ union in a joint struggle. Unity would make us more powerful. That’s why Local 100 Fightback’s motions for a rally against the MTA have emphasized the need to reach out to the LIRR workers to join us.

We know that many Local 100 members are disgusted by the way we are treated with much less respect and make so much less in wages and benefits than LIRR and MetroNorth workers. We have every right to be angry about this. But we must understand that we are not going to win any battles against Cuomo and the bosses by showing hostility to other working people. If we do, it will only makes it easier for the MTA Bosses and Cuomo divide and conquer all of us.

Why Local 100 Should Defend Riders from Fare Hikes and Service Cuts

With their outrageous claims of overtime theft, Cuomo and the MTA bosses aimed to renew the stereotype of transit workers as greedy and turn the riding public against us. They want us to be without public support as we face their demands for big contract givebacks. And they did it knowing their lies would only worsen the epidemic of assaults of transit workers.
That shows how little Cuomo and the MTA bosses care about us, and it shows how desperate they are. The reality is that they make life a misery for both transit workers and riders and they are terrified we will unite against them.
The fact is that transit workers and riders face a common enemy. The dirty truth behind the crisis in transit service is not only the fact that the system has been underfunded for decades, but that those cuts in funding were designed to force the MTA to increasingly rely for funds on issuing bonds to Wall Street investors that guarantee a regular profit being paid to them in return.
The MTA’s debt limit is now at a whopping $123 billion – that’s more debt than most of the world’s nations carry! Its annual profit payments to investors now account for 20% of the MTA’s annual budget – more than it spends on the healthcare and pensions of its workforce. And those payments are expected to rise to $3.2 billion a year by 2021.
In other words, it’s the demands for profits by greedy, do-nothing Wall Street investors that lies behind Cuomo’s attacks on our wages and working conditions, and its what lies behind the MTA inflicting fare hikes, service cuts and general misery on the riding public.
Imagine how popular Local 100 would be if it threw its resources into exposing this scandal and mobilizing workers and riders in protest against both the attacks on our wages and working conditions as well against the MTA’s fare hikes and service cuts!
That’s why Local 100 Fightback has always fought for our union to come out in defense of the riding public against fare hikes and service cuts. We need the public’s support if we are going to be able to defend our jobs, wages and working conditions, and there’s no better way to win it than by standing up for the riding public and showing that we’re on their side. It’s the right thing to do.

The main obstacle to such a struggle is, of course, Local 100’s leadership. Their alliance with Governor Cuomo has included siding with him and the MTA bosses and not lifting a finger to defend the riding public.

Unfortunately, we can’t replace Utano & Co. before we mobilize a fightback against the attacks coming from Cuomo and the MTA bosses. So right now we have to do all we can to force our elected leaders to break their alliance with the Governor and start to resist the MTA’s attacks with a united protest in defense of both transit workers and the riding public.