NEW YORK CITY — A week after a wheel fell off an in-service bus in Queens, and six months before the largest city transit worker contract expires, TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100 safety inspectors found 96 unsafe buses at the College Point bus depot on May 25. The disregard of the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) for safety and the workers’ enforcement of their contract effectively shut down morning rush-hour service.
Like all capitalists and their loyal bureaucrats, the MTA management responded to Local 100’s safety inspection by putting profits first. Workers’ tax dollars, transit workers’ labor and riders’ fares enable the MTA to pay Wall Street investors $1.2 billion interest in profits. These payments increase annually, coming from worker layoffs, reduced service and maintenance.
Management’s job is to preserve those profits, above all. So instead of dealing with the safety problems that put passengers and operators in danger, depot supervisors took four bus operators out of service for refusing to drive unsafe buses. Communism, a worker-run society without profits and bosses, would put the needs of the international working class first.
This latest attack on transit follows two years of layoffs, delays in transit worker raises, fare hikes, and deteriorating service. One of the four out-of-service operators, a shop steward with two unrelated pending charges, faces dismissal. (Another bus operator with no disciplinary record is now back in service.) These latest attacks on transit workers, along with the dangerous conditions that sparked them, are inherently racist because they strike the majority black, Latino, and immigrant riders and workers hardest.
Militant job actions, such as safety shutdowns, are workers’ best response to these racist attacks. But the political line that drives the militancy matters as much as the actions themselves. Under a capitalist system, the bosses who run society will inevitably take away a “good” contract or decent safety measures over time. U.S. public-sector workers, who represent 20 percent of all black workers, are under the gun from politicians of all the bosses’ parties.
For the most part, union leaders throughout the U.S. are diverting workers’ anger to vote for “friends in high places.” Their idea of “militancy” is to stage symbolic actions that blow off steam but do nothing to hurt the ruling class. For lasting progress, workers need to overthrow the bosses in revolution and build a communist society where workers will hold state power, where they will labor for our class’s need, not bosses’ profit.
Without this long-term communist outlook, short-term reform victories only promote the illusion that the capitalist system can work. The reality is that capitalist competition is forcing U.S. bosses to wipe out the few gains public-sector workers have made in order to maximize profits. That’s the only way the ruling class can pay for imperialist wars and bank and auto bailouts. Without communist goals, defeats like those sweeping the public sector can made workers cynical about mass class struggle. Only organizing for a mass communist movement can turn temporary defeats into lessons for long-term victories of revolution and workers’ power.
TWU Local 100 is planning a demonstration at College Point depot and has placed the three remaining out-of-service operators on the union’s release-time payroll until they are back in service. Many transit workers are furious at the MTA for pulling such a stunt. “The supervisor should be in jail,” fumed one bus operator from East New York Depot. As we go to press, PLP is organizing to defend these operators and to take rank-and-file actions against the bosses. Stayed tuned to see how CHALLENGE readers can help