USA, trasporti, lotta di classe USA, settori, trasporti, lotta di classe
Die Welt 05-12-22
Il sindacato dei trasporti di NY dovrà pagare multe di milioni
Anette Dowideit
Secondo
giorno di sciopero nei trasporti di NY contro l’aumento contributi
pensionistici dal 2 al 6% del salario, richiesto aumento del 10,5% su
tre anni.
Con procedura d’urgenza un
tribunale di NY ha comminato una multa di $1mn. per ogni giorno di
sciopero al sindacato dei trasporti, + il taglio di due giornate di
salario per ogni giorno di sciopero per ogni scioperante. Per i
dirigenti multe fino a $1000.
33 700 gli iscritti al sindacato trasporti di NY (TWU), il salario annuale medio è ora di $55 000 (€45 795).
L’amministrazione comunale di NY calcola che il primo giorno di sciopero sia costato $400mn. in mancati introiti, $300mn. per ogni giorno in più.
[dal NYT]
Una
dozzina di dirigenti sindacali, compresi quelli degli insegnanti e dei
pompieri hanno appoggiato il tentativo di resistere alla richieste di
aumento dei contributi, senza però appoggiare incondizionatamente lo sciopero.
Lo sciopero è illegale, oltre alle multe per il presidente del TWU, Toussaint, rischio di carcere.
Il sindaco, Michael R.Bloomberg (noto uomo d’affari) ha parlato degli scioperanti come di “farabutti” e “avidi”; anche il governatore, Pataki, e gli editorialisti dei giornali locali accusano il sindacato di avidità e di disprezzo della legge.
Toussaint
ha risposto dichiarando che la disputa è essenzialmente uno scontro tra
cittadini di New York che lavorano duramente e faticano a tirare a fine
mese e l’establishment danaroso, alla cui testa sta un sindaco
miliardario, che non ha alcun rapporto con la classe lavoratrice di NY.
Il linguaggio usato per parlare di pubblici dipendenti è indecoroso.
Con una multa come quella richiesta, il sindacato è destinato a fallire, tanto vale continuare lo sciopero.
La prima pagina del New York Post titola “Voi sorci”. Il
sindacato centrale dei lavoratori per il trasporto a breve si è
espresso contro lo sciopero.
Il predecessore di Toussaint, Michael J. Quill, organizzò un solo sciopero, quello del 1966 di 12 giorni.
Quill avrebbe scelto meglio il momento dello scontro, il primo giorno in carica del nuovo sindaco John V. Lindsay.
Bloomberg
è appena stato rieletto, è un uomo d’affari con scarsa considerazione
per i sindacati; il governatore Pataki intende presentarsi per le
presidenziali, e sa che se si dimostra filo-sindacato non avrà buoni
risultati in South Carolina.
[Dal sito TWU]
Toussaint
è originario di Trinidad, dirige un sindacato in cui il 70% dei
lavoratori dei trasporti di NY è di colore, neri, latino-americani o
asiatici-americani, mentre in passato erano per la maggior parte
discendenti da europei.
Toussaint impugna la questione
razziale contro l’atteggiamento e il linguaggio del sindaco Bloomberg,
presenta lo sciopero come parte di un movimento per la giustizia
sociale e a difesa della dignità dei lavoratori chiede l’appoggio del
movimento per i diritti civili.
Interventi anti-razzisti
in difesa degli scioperanti da parte del pastore protestante: «Come mai
siamo diventati delinquenti? Perché scioperiamo per le pensioni?»;
ricorda che nel 1968 Martin Luther King fu assassinato mentre si
trovava a Memphis per appoggiare lo sciopero dei lavoratori delle
fognature, anch’esso ritenuto illegale.
Un altro pastore ha
paragonato Bloomberg a Eugene (Bull) Connor, il capo della polizia
dell’Alabama che usava cani poliziotti e idranti contro i manifestanti
negli anni 1960.Die Welt 05-12-22
New Yorks Transportgewerkschaft soll Millionenstrafe zahlen
Streik bei Verkehrsbetrieben stürzt US-Metropole ins Chaos – Ausstand kostet Wirtschaft 300 Millionen Dollar am Tag
von Anette Dowideit
New
York – Harry Hawk macht derzeit das Geschäft seines Lebens. Seine
Wassertaxis, die sonst nur ein paar Touristen von Queens nach Manhattan
bringen, sind gefragt wie nie – Anzugträger stehen stundenlang
Schlange, um mit den Fähren zur Arbeit zu kommen.
Auch am zweiten Tag des Streiks im Öffentlichen Nahverkehr von New York war das Chaos groß –
sieben Millionen Menschen, die auf die U-Bahnen und Busse der Metropole
angewiesen sind, mußten ihren Weg zur Arbeit auf andere Weise
zurücklegen. Die Wut auf die 33 700 Mitglieder der streikenden
Gewerkschaft Transport Workers Union (TWU) ist groß. Ein New Yorker
Gericht entschied im Eilverfahren, daß die Gewerkschaft pro Streiktag
eine Mio. Dollar an Strafe zahlen muß, zusätzlich werden jedem
Streikenden zwei Tageslöhne pro Streiktag gestrichen. Die Anführer
sollen möglicherweise mit Geldstrafen in Höhe von bis zu 1000 Dollar
belangt werden.
Auslöser für den Streik waren geplante Einschnitte bei den Sozialleistungen. Die
Bezirksregierung von New York will erreichen, daß neue ÖPNV-Mitarbeiter
in Zukunft sechs statt bisher zwei Prozent ihres Gehalts in die
Rentenkasse einzahlen müssen. Wegen dieser Forderung rief Gewerkschaftschef Roger Toussaint in der Nacht auf Dienstag den ersten Ausstand seit 25 Jahren aus. Die
TWU strebt einen Lohnaufschlag von 10,5 Prozent über die nächsten drei
Jahre an. Derzeit liegt das durchschnittliche Jahreseinkommen der
ÖPNV-Angestellten bei 55 000 Dollar (45 795 Euro).
Am
zweiten Streiktag waren die Straßen von Manhattan mit Autos völlig
verstopft – obwohl Taxis nur noch mit mindestens vier Insassen in die
Innenstadt dürfen. Frierende Pendler stellten sich stundenlang in
Schlangen, um Tickets für alternative Transportmittel wie Züge aus New
Jersey zu ergattern. "Die Gewerkschaftsmitglieder sollen froh sein, daß
sie Arbeit haben. Ich bin sicher, die Opfer von Hurrikan Katrina würden
die Jobs gern übernehmen", sagte Anna Silia aus Brooklyn, die sich
ihren Weg zur Arbeit zu Fuß über die Brooklyn Bridge bahnte.
Auch
New Yorks Bürgermeister Michael Bloomberg schimpfte bei einem Auftritt
auf die Gewerkschaft: "Diese Leute sind selbstsüchtig und haben keinen
Respekt für die Menschen von New York." Nach Schätzungen des
Stadtkämmerers dürfte der Streik New York allein am ersten Tag 400 Mio.
Dollar (335 Mio. Euro) an entgangenen Einnahmen gekostet haben, für
jeden weiteren Tag kämen 300 Dollar hinzu.
Artikel erschienen am Do, 22. Dezember 2005 © WELT.de 1995 – 2005
Tough Stance, Tougher Fines: Union Leader Is in a Corner
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers’ local, defiantly
announced a strike, he proclaimed that his union was taking a proud
stand against the concessions that employers had demanded nationwide.
Not only that, but the
mayor, the governor and editorial writers are denouncing the union as
greedy and showing contempt for the law. The front page of The New York
Post screamed, "You Rats." And the transit workers’ parent union has
come out in opposition to the strike.
have painted themselves into a corner," said Barry L. Feinstein, the
former president of New York City’s largest Teamsters local and now a
member of the transportation authority’s board.
Looking for a way out of this corner, Mr. Toussaint yesterday seized on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s characterization of the strikers as "thuggish" and "greedy," saying it was insulting language to describe workers whom millions of New Yorkers rely on each day to ferry them to work. A
dozen union leaders, including the heads of the teachers and the
firefighters, backed his effort to resist the transportation
authority’s demand for pension concessions. But they stopped short of
giving enthusiastic support to the illegal walkout.
Toussaint invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as
he sought to rally his troops, and New Yorkers, in effect portraying
the strike as a civil rights campaign to help a work force that is
largely black and Hispanic.
Mr. Toussaint also sought to throw Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki on the defensive by asserting
that the dispute was essentially a showdown between hard-working New
Yorkers struggling to make ends meet and a moneyed establishment. At
the head of that establishment, Mr. Toussaint said repeatedly, is a
billionaire mayor, out of touch with working-class New Yorkers.
appeal to you. Unlike the person using this kind of language, we are
the ones who know the lives of hard-working people, and not the mayor."
Mr. Toussaint’s words were powerful, it was not at all clear whether
they would be potent in helping his union out of a tight spot. To do
that, he must protect his union’s honor and win his workers a better
deal than the one he rejected just before the strike deadline.
the fine against the union growing by $1 million each day, Mr.
Toussaint may well hope to shoot the moon, reasoning that the financial
penalties might grow so large, and bankruptcy so certain, that his union might just as well stay out for 30 days as for 3.
Or, as John H. Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center, put it, "The union recognizes that there is no difference between unbearable fines and doubly unbearable ones."
Toussaint, the truculent bargainer, has drawn so many lines in the sand
– refusing binding arbitration, or any contract that treats new workers
worse, or any wage offer that does not exceed inflation – that it is
hard to imagine that he might not eventually have to accept a deal that
will make him eat some humble pie. But the history of labor
relations is peopled with negotiators who steadfastly assert that they
will never accept this or that and then a week or two later accept it,
saying that they were cleverly posturing.
Robert W. Snyder, author of "Transit Talk," an oral history of subway and bus workers, said Mr. Toussaint had created problems for his union by striking when he did. He
said Mr. Toussaint had not acted as wisely as his famed predecessor,
Michael J. Quill, who led the union’s 12-day strike in 1966.
grew up in the Irish Republican Army and he knew something about
guerrilla warfare – the first rule is you don’t fight when the
advantage lies with your adversary."
He
said Mr. Quill was smart for striking when John V. Lindsay was weak –
it was his first day as mayor. In contrast, Mr. Toussaint has gone on
strike when the tide seems against him. Mayor Bloomberg was just
resoundingly re-elected and Governor Pataki is thinking of running for
president.
"Pataki knows that if he is friendly to the unions it won’t play well in the South Carolina primary," Mr. Snyder said. "And Mayor Bloomberg has no appreciation of labor unions. He is very business-minded."
city will be in court seeking additional fines against individual
strikers, while Justice Theodore T. Jones of State Supreme Court in
Brooklyn might order the jailing of Mr. Toussaint – a move that some city officials fear could turn him into a martyr but might not move the strike closer to settlement.
are any number of honorable exits for him, but the first thing he has
to do is get back to the bargaining table," Mr. Feinstein said.
labor experts say the best opportunity to reach a settlement is over
the next few days. If the work stoppage drags on for more than a week,
union leaders, already facing union bankruptcy, may feel they have
little more to lose, and union members, facing large fines, may believe
that the longer they stay out the more likely they will somehow win
amnesty, reducing the fines.
Times: Race Bubbles to the Surface in Standoff
21-The standoff between the Transport Workers Union and the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, tense and perilous, was already
taking a harsh physical and economic toll on New Yorkers.
of a mostly nonwhite work force trade recriminations publicly with
white leaders in government and at the transportation authority, the
potentially volatile issue of race, with all its emotional
consequences, is bubbling to the surface.
examples are both blatant and subtle, some open to interpretation, some
openly hostile. Regarding the latter sort, the union – representing
workers who are largely minority – shut down a Web log where the public
could comment on the strike after it became so clogged with messages
comparing the workers to monkeys and calling them "you people." (Seventy percent of the employees of New York City Transit are black, Latino or Asian-American.)
took on a life of its own yesterday as minority leaders and union
members attacked the mayor’s conduct as objectionable, or worse. "There
has been some offensive and insulting language used," said Roger Toussaint, the union leader. "This is regrettable and it is certainly unbecoming for the mayor of the city of New York to be using this type of language."
others were more extreme in their response. Leroy Bright, 56, a black
bus operator who is also a union organizer, saw racial coding in Mr.
Bloomberg’s choice of words. "The word thug is usually attributed to
people of color whenever something negative takes place," he said, adding that the language was "unnecessarily hostile."
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?"
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."
in the day, the Rev. Herbert D. Daughtry, a Brooklyn pastor, joined
elected officials at a City Hall news conference and compared Mr.
Bloomberg to Eugene (Bull) Connor, the Alabama police chief who used
police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protesters in the 1960’s.
Skyler, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, dismissed those comments,
saying, "It’s despicable for anyone to inject race into this
situation." He noted that when police and fire union members were
trailing the mayor during contract negotiations, Mr. Skyler had accused
them of "acting like thugs," to little comment.
for all the accusations and counter-accusations, clues of a simmering
racial tension have hovered over the contract negotiations between the
union and the transit authority all along.
Toussaint, for instance, continued yesterday to cast the strike as part
of a broader movement for social justice and invoked the civil rights
movement, as he often does in his calls to respect the dignity of his
workers. "Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law
instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses
today would instead be at the back of the bus," he said.
Toussaint added that he was the one who pointed out that the authority
did not honor the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The
authority, in its offer on Monday night, agreed to create such a
holiday, an action estimated to cost $9 million a year.
Indeed,
the politics of the strike are in some ways embedded in the broader
demographic changes in the city. Mr. Toussaint, who is originally from
Trinidad, leads a union, now dominated by blacks, Latinos and
Asian-Americans, whose members were once mostly of European descent.
race is a subtext of much of what has happened in city politics, in the
ethnic succession within unions and city agencies," said Douglas A.
Muzzio, a professor at the Baruch School of Public Affairs, who said he
saw nothing inherently racial in the use of the term thuggish.
members of the Transport Workers Union, however, there is a real and
bitter sense that city leaders speak of them differently from members
of other unions, like those of police officers and firefighters, whose
memberships are whiter.
McAnanama, a semi-retired union leader and former transit worker said
transit employees have received less praise for their contributions
during city emergencies like the 2001 terror attack and the 2003
blackout. "Whenever there’s praise given out we’re always the stepchild
if we’re mentioned at all," he said.
Now, that
sense of injustice has more fully emerged among workers on strike and
is being championed by elected officials from the City Council to
Congress. Mr. Sharpton made the civil rights connection explicit,
noting that when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, he was in
Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike, a strike also held to
be illegal.