WASHINGTON, DC, February 5 — Today transit workers in Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Union, took a big step against the racist Metro system by opposing the bosses’ rule against hiring former prisoners. Thousands of workers are returning to the District of Columbia from incarceration every year, desperately needing jobs. Metro, like other bosses in the city, are blocking them. “I paid my debt to society,” one worker declared, “and now I need to work. I don’t want to be going back to prison anytime soon.” But background checks and former criminal convictions are keeping them jobless.
Recently, the city council refused the demands of masses of workers to pass a bill making it easier for such returnees to apply for and obtain employment. Initially the politicians acted like they were supporting them in their quest for jobs, but when the DC Chamber of Commerce launched a lobbying campaign against the bill, the councilors quickly remembered who they worked for and vetoed the bill.
The denial of job opportunities to these former prisoners is blatant racism. First, the bosses’ cops stop and frisk young black and Latino workers and send them to prison on weak and/or manufactured evidence. (See first item in Red Eye, page 7.) Then the bosses deny them jobs when they return. This creates a low-wage workforce, easily exploited by the bosses. A good exposé of this modern slavery is Michelle Alexander’s recent book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
For three decades, the Metro transit system here hired workers who reported their former jail time on their applications. Last year the Metro Board changed its policy and the traitorous transit union leadership fell into line, supporting the new policy of background checks to weed out applicants with records. Metro has even begun background checks on existing employees, firing them if an offense is found.
But this week workers at the union meeting overturned the union mis-leadership’s slavish support of Metro policy. Workers understood this policy is racist and were angry that their family members and friends were no longer eligible to work at the best-paying blue-collar job in the District. Many long-time workers told of encounters with racist police in an area where racial profiling was so prevalent that Amnesty International exposed it in their report entitled, “Driving While Black.”
This show of class solidarity against a racist system energized workers at Metro. It could lead to further pressure on transit bosses and the city to “Ban the Box” (on the job application where incarcerations have to be declared) and hire returnees so they can live independently and rebuild their lives.
Now is the time for the PLP club at Metro and the thousands of rank-and-file workers to fight the bosses’ onsalught of racism towards their workers and the community in general. For example, Metro has raised fares and cut bus service in predominantly African American areas, including Southeast DC/Anacostia.
By distributing CHALLENGES at this week’s union meeting, the Party was able to link the struggle here with that of New York City’s striking school bus workers. Solidarity with other transit workers and these returnees (who are brother and sister workers as well) must move front and center as the bosses’ crisis spurs increasing racist attacks on the working class.