Workers Declare, ‘It ain’t right!’ DC BUS DRIVERS FIGHT BACK

WASHINGTON DC, February 10—With the help of communist leadership from Progressive Labor Party, bus drivers poured out of the 175-bus Northern Garage to protest the agency’s racist disregard for their safety.
More than 35 transit workers, joined by some riders, picketed for an hour with signs calling for “Service With Protection” and “Transit Workers Lives Matter.”  In a lively call-and-response, workers chanted, “It ain’t right!” after each example of abusive action by the bosses was called out by speakers at the rally. People driving by honked and cheered.
Instead of standing up for assaulted drivers, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) bosses are supporting the arrest, suspension and disciplining of any drivers who defend themselves when attacked.
The attacks on transit workers are racist. As the transit workforce changed from predominantly white in the 1960s to predominantly Black today, WMATA has ratcheted up its attacks. Management is determined to take back the gains that were won in the wildcat strike of 1978, led primarily by PLP members, which closed the city down for a week.
Racist Bosses Blame the Victims
Bus operators’ physical and psychological welfare has been jeopardized by cutbacks in their passengers’ mental health and substance use treatment, rising homelessness, and mass unemployment. Still, drivers are expected to collect fares from all riders while navigating the snarled traffic. Assaults on operators, recorded by video cameras mounted in all vehicles, include spitting and punching, with 90 percent of all incidents involving fares. The video recordings are used to justify disciplinary measures against drivers who react in self-defense.
Recently, two drivers were assaulted in separate cases. Both were suspended by Metro and one was arrested and charged with assault. The response by both municipal police and transit police is to blame the victim. WMATA bosses have piled on by subjecting victimized drivers to internal discipline.
In 2015, WMATA introduced a new disciplinary matrix that imposed harsher punishments for minor driver errors, leading to more suspensions and firings of operators. More recently, WMATA bosses have used retroactive criminal background checks to fire established older workers at the top of the pay scale.
In response to protests by PLP members and friends, a lawsuit has been filed on this issue and a grievance hearing is coming up soon.
Some operators have called for stationing police on the buses to prevent rider assaults. At our rally, a retired transit worker denounced this strategy. The siege of racist police violence in recent years has made it all too clear that the cops are more of threat than protection. Putting police on the bus would criminalize riders and divide them from the operators, which in turn would hurt workers’ ability to combat abusive management practices.
What’s Fair? No Fare!
At today’s rally, workers demanded that WMATA eliminate driver responsibility for fare collection. In fact, WMATA could eliminate fares entirely. Riders and drivers can unite around this issue. In 2014 in Brazil, hundreds of thousands protested to demand free transportation. As one of our signs said, “What’s Fair? No Fare!”  
Who would pay the transit costs instead? The bosses and their federal government. The transit system is essential for developers who have built hugely profitable enterprises in downtown DC. Currently, about 50 percent of transit operating funds come from fares. Increased taxes on developers and other corporations could cover all costs. A popular refrain at the rally made this point:  “I don’t know, but I’ve been told, the Verizon Center is lined with gold!”
As the U.S. bosses’ rivalry with China’s bosses intensifies (see editorial, page 2), attacks on the working class will only increase. A demand for the bosses to pay challenges the capitalist system’s profit motive. No worker should have to pay for a transportation system built and maintained by our class. A world based on workers’ needs is possible—but only under communism.
Building Workers’ Power
In July, workers in Amalgamated Transit Union 689 will face a contract fight over pensions, health benefits and wages. Today’s rally is another step in empowering people to prepare for that fight.
PL’ers and workers organized the Take a Stand Team in the December 2015 union election on an anti-racist slate. They are organizing against the transit bosses’ attacks, including the racist disciplinary actions and the racist retroactive background checks. Demands for shortening the wage progression (number of years needed to receive top pay), restoring retirement health benefits for newly hired workers, and fully funding the pension plan were part of the campaign. The Take a Stand Team received 1,800 votes (32 percent of the total) and came close to overturning the current president, who received less than 40 percent of the vote. Importantly, it demonstrated that many more workers are prepared to organize and strike. Through this struggle, PL’ers are building a pro-communist network of workers throughout the transit system.
They are thinking about what it means to be strike-ready, to fight for a better contract and to raise anti-racism. More than 40 workers have joined biweekly meetings and day-to-day discussions on the need for more militant and organized resistance.
Our discussions also address racist police violence and the increasing wealth of the ruling class. As a result, the need for a communist revolution and worker control over society became clearer to many friends of PLP.