Class Struggle, Not Lobbying, Path for Transit Workers

WASHINGTON, DC, May 20 — Today several hundred east coast transit workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union (TWU), rallied and lobbied Congress for increased capital funds (for buses, subway cars and new track) for city mass transit systems. International union officers spoke, along with former FBI stoolpigeon Al Sharpton. PLP members came to oppose the lobbying strategy and instead distributed hundreds of PL flyers calling for sharper class struggle against the racist attacks on transit workers throughout the country, a large proportion of whom are black and Latino.
The ongoing economic crisis of capitalism, the flyer noted, demonstrated the need for communist revolution to take power out of the hands of the bosses and put it into working-class hands. A communist workers’ government would organize transit to meet the needs of workers and riders instead of the profits of the capitalists and bondholders.
The rally’s speakers demonstrated misleadership at its highest level. President John Samuelson of New York’s TWU Local 100 sang the praises of their new contract with the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority bosses. Rank-and-file New York TWU members at the rally said, however, that the agreement was trash. It had been ratified, they said, because they saw no other option — there was no fightback planned by the leadership.
Several PL transit workers and their friends who passed out PLP’s flyer learned that, without a doubt, it was up to us to organize class struggle, since our union leaders have long given up on serious battles against the bosses. Transit workers are under sharp attack since they’re generally better paid than the average worker and the bosses want to push them back down, using racism to divide and isolate the workers from the rest of the working class.
To resist attacks, it is critical for transit workers to go beyond their own immediate interests and build anti-racist and revolutionary politics among themselves as well as the general community. Then a broad militant class struggle against the bosses can be built in cities with major transit systems — uniting black, Latino, white and immigrant workers. This can turn the sharp attack against us into a resurgent working-class movement that can fight effectively against the bosses and move our class towards revolution.