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New York Rising, and Going Back to Bed

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 20 December 2005
7 comments

Edito Strikes USA Transports

 

WOID #17 -

Strike one for the working guy.

If the Masters of the Universe (New York’s mayor, New York State, the bosses, Wall Street and the lumpenbobos thought this was going to be "1980 Transit Strike, II" they’ve been disappointed.

Nineteen-eighty : good little New Yorkers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, Job über Alles, with the Mayor playing Right-to-Work Guiding the people, not much in the titty department, though.

This time : nothing. Deserted streets. My post office closed. Passersby seem happy enough to not have much to do. And the Big Mike-a-Mike over the airwaves, talking about the immorality of a strike, about those poor New Yorkers who make only twenty to thirty thou a year. That’s the multibillionaire, Mike Bloomberg.

As if it was about money. The MTA, the more-or-less public authority that runs the greatest public transport system in America, has a huge surplus. The point is to beat back the workers, all workers : pushing back retirement, cutting back benefits for new hires, and so forth. For Wall Street and the Fed it’s about holding down inflation at all cost except to oneself : to keep the dollar low and the Arabs and French (the rich ones of course) buying up America. And it’s being done on the worker’s back, and it’s been going on in New York already, with shameful contracts signed by the public school teachers and municipal employees, though not yet for the public universities, which have been without a contract for over three years.

We shall see...

– French version

Forum posts

  • I predict Halliburton will be contracted, then they will bring in guest workers from o/seas & pay them.50 cents per annum.God Bless America land of bigger corporations.Heil gwb.

    • Another piece from Democracy Now!

      Report: Deal-Breaking MTA Demand Would Have Saved Only $20 Million
      Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting new details of the last-minute negotiations that broke down early Tuesday morning: Minutes before Monday night’s 12:01 am strike deadline, the authority put forward a demand that new transit workers contribute 6 percent toward their pensions, up from the current 2 percent. The Times says that demand would have saved the city less than $20 million dollars over the next three years – a sum less than what the New York Police Department will spend on extra overtime during the first two days of the strike.

  • I read on Democracy Now! that at the last moment the president of the international parent union of the TWU, Michael O’Brien, refused to authorize the strike. Pretty disgusting. I hope the strikers have better luck than the Northwest Airlines mechanics have had. Fight on! And on! And On!

    Sooner or later we are all going to have to be part of the IWW (http://www.iww.org/), a true workers’ union.

    • So why should some guy in a booth doing a job a monkey could do feel dissatisfied with $51,000 a year? Puh-lease.

    • Read the story again. They are trying to protect their retirement and that of new workers. Even in retirement bananas cost.

    • I know that $51,000 sounds like a lot, but in a blue state where people and their time has value as does property... Try to pay a half a million dollars bank note on a $51,000 a year salary. If $51,000 seems like a lot, maybe it’s time to move to a blue state. If you live in one already, form a union and fight for higher wages. You see red state retards are cowards afraid to stand up for themselves, they would rather see others have theirs taken away. They believe the big lie that no working class person should get more than $8.50 an hour, maybe $12.50 an hour if they went to college. Wake up if you feel $51,000 is too much for that job and you are worth much more. Start a union and get what your worth, you should be happy for those that have well paying jobs. They keep the standard of living high. The road to the bottom is paved with envy...

  • The Chinese and the Japanese hold the bulk of US debt.