Transit workers win settlement; Must continue to fight racism

WASHINGTON, DC, March 21—After a multi-year, mass struggle against racist criminal background checks at WMATA, the Washington D.C. Metro transit system, the bosses at Metro recently settled a class-action lawsuit for $6.5 million in December. This reform victory shows how necessary it is to organize among Black workers and develop a mass base.
Though some workers will benefit from the settlement, there is more fightback to come. The bosses throw reformist crumbs to our class here and there to stifle our fightback. “Winning” some settlements will never liberate workers from this capitalist hell. But the militancy workers showed here is a harbinger of their revolutionary potential.
Change in hiring
WMATA changed its relatively liberal hiring policy in late 2011 to one excluding applicants for Metro jobs based on a rigid list of prior misdemeanors and felonies. This policy kept many Black workers in the city, victims of the ruling class’s racist “War on Drugs”, from  working in most parts of the transit system. Prior convictions kept workers from driving a bus, being a mechanic, or working on the rail. Metro management did new background checks on newly hired workers. They also began applying the rules to workers who were out of work for more than 90 days (due to illness or injury). As a result, several workers with decades of time in at Metro were fired, even though they had revealed their previous criminal record to Metro management when they were originally hired.  
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) workers at Metro and PL’ers who are members of the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) joined with community members, public health workers and previously-incarcerated workers to fight back against the policy. From 2012-2015, we led rallies, attended board hearings and forced the D.C. City Council to have a special hearing on this egregious hiring policy.  We met returning workers who told their grim stories, connected with lawyers, and collected over 1,000 signatures on a petition to demand an end to the policy.
In July 2014, the Washington Lawyers for Civil Rights, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the private law firm of Arnold and Porter brought a class action suit against Metro for its racist hiring policy.  It is estimated that 1,000 workers are eligible for some payment from the settlement. As a result of the settlement, Metro has agreed to use a more flexible case-by-case review of applicants, which will give previously-incarcerated workers a chance to be hired.
All struggle centered around Black transit workers
Because PLP takes on antiracist struggles and has a base in D.C.’s working class communities, as well as Metro, the Party quickly realized this was a necessary fight. In our public health work we learned from the community that the housing and employment situation for residents returning from prison was dire. From our comrades at Metro we learned of the new policy and quickly joined forces in a campaign that lasted over two years. The campaign exposed the misleaders of the transit workers’ unions (ATU 689 and 1764), who refused to fight against the racist hiring policy. These misleaders have feared workers going on strike against Metro’s racist actions, and continue to be scared to break the bosses’ laws when only such action will lead to progress. As Mike Quill, legendary leader of NY transit workers in the 1950s and 60s once said, “If you’re going to be a union leader, you have to be ready to go to jail”. Not so for today’s transit union sellouts!
The attack on transit workers continues to reach fever pitch. Last year, Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld called for privatizing system services. Privatization would erase benefits for these workers and weaken the union. But the sellout unions and fake-proletarian Democrats have also supported this racist push.
Meanwhile, local developers and other capitalists take home millions in increased value from real estate near their stations driven by the value added from access to the transit system. The bosses have rewarded the Metro managers with bloated salaries running in the hundred of thousands of dollars (General Manager Paul Wiedefeld makes over $400,000 per year), while slandering regular workers as overpaid. The average salary a worker needs to afford a two-bedroom apartment in D.C. is $103,543. (Curbed, 7/14/2017) Yet the rank and file workers can barely make rent:
“The median salary at WMATA is $68,544. About 7,500 (mostly union-represented) workers earn base salaries of $50,000 to $80,000, far from eye-popping amounts in a region known from strong employment rates and high housing costs.” (WAMU, 2/17/2017)
Workers here and worldwide must continue to fight institutional racism against the many Black workers who have been incarcerated and targeted in the War on Drugs. Programs in D.C. like the “jump outs” or “Stop and Frisk” in New York have created arrests and convictions that will keep workers from employment, housing and other programs. Similar background check policies limit job opportunities in hospitals, school systems, retail and construction as well as transit.
Sharp anti-racist struggles like this one lead to discussions about the need for revolution against capitalism and the fight for communism and have brought new workers into the PLP’s orbit. These struggles also lay the basis for a more militant union, willing to become “strike ready” and defy the bosses and their laws. Marching on May Day in New York City under communist leadership is a critical next step for the circle of workers preparing to strike against the D.C. transit bosses.