NEW YORK CITY, October 28 — Hundreds of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 workers are marching across the Brooklyn Bridge today. They are protesting the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) decision to appeal a legally-binding arbitration award granted in August. Some workers also organized slowdowns on October 14, a union-labeled “Day of Outrage.”

Slowdowns and other on-the-job actions are workers’ best responses to these attacks. But the political direction of militancy matters as much as the militancy itself. Reforms under capitalism can be taken away. For lasting progress, workers need to overthrow the bosses and build a communist society where workers hold power and work for need, not profit.

Many transit workers who were fined for the illegal 2005 strike are furious that the MTA is challenging workers for following the arbitration law. Protest signs read, “What part of binding don’t you get?”

The award is based on the cops’ and firefighters’ contracts, whose majority white workforces got better deals than transit. But the city’s racist rulers chose to attack transit’s mainly black and Latino workforce.

The boss’s laws enforce the will of the capitalist ruling class. The Taylor law was a reform “victory” that allowed municipal unions to organize after the 1966 transit strike. But the bosses used it to punish transit workers in the aftermath of the 1980 and 2005 strikes. The bosses’ laws serve their needs, and arbitration is binding only when it favors them.

The August award they’re fighting gave workers an 11% pay raise over three years, and reduced the healthcare contribution to 1.5% from 1.53%. But the 2006 arbitration award, received after the strike, punished workers and so went unchallenged by the bosses.

What Next?

More slowdowns and demonstrations are needed but rank-and-file workers, not union misleaders, or politicians like Bill Thompson, John Liu, and Bill De Blasio, must lead fight-backs. Local 100’s two main factions are trying to direct workers’ anger only at Mayor Bloomberg, for backing the MTA board’s racist decision, but all politicians serve the capitalist class. Following them will lead to similar deals that deceive and attack workers.

Lasting victory means building the Progressive Labor Party to raise the ante of class struggle and organize against capitalism. That’s the only way to ensure that the militant action of October 14 was not just blowing off steam, but serves as a small example of the tremendous class struggle needed to unite for communist victory. J

The MTA — Wall Street’s ATM

The bosses want the city’s workers to resent “greedy” transit workers for their above-average contract. The real greedy ones are MTA bosses and Wall Street banks that made transit generate millions in bank profits.

As Track Equipment Maintainer Kevin Maloney explained in a letter to the civil-service newspaper The Chief (10/9), the real cause of the MTA’s budget woes is “debt service,” not
“out-of-control” labor costs.

Fifty-five percent of the MTA’s funds are paid by riders. To fill the budget gap created by a lack of government funding, the MTA colluded with major banks to borrow money in the form of bonds. Now two billion dollars, nearly 20% of the MTA’s 2009 budget, is going to “debt service” — paying the interest on those bonds. This is the fastest growing part of the MTA’s deficit (Straphangers Campaign).

The liberal Drum Major Institute reported (4/9), “Between 2003 and 2008, debt payments and non-labor expenses grew by 45 percent and 40 percent, respectively, whereas labor costs grew by 16 percent. Debt payments are expected to grow another 51 percent by 2012 — a financially unsustainable trend.”

SEATTLE, WA, October 26 — As CHALLENGE reported (10/28), Boeing International Association of Machinists (IAM) union district president Wroblewski hasn’t found the time to attend our local meetings since the Party’s summer plant-gate demonstrations against the no-strike deal. He has, however, found time to participate in secret no-strike talks in Chicago and Washington, D.C. led by international IAM president Buffenbarger (Seattle Times, 10/22, front page).

This shocker reemphasized how serious the bosses are about imposing fascist conditions on industrial workers. These times call for nothing less than the long-term fight for communist revolution. Increased CHALLENGE networks and revolutionary class-conscious leadership moving workers into class struggle are paramount.

In contrast, the day before many local union officials joined Boeing representatives in company cafeterias praising “20 Years [of] Building Bridges Together,” celebrating joint safety and training programs. More like building bridges to capitulation to fascism!

The UAW at Boeing is doing its class-collaborationist part. Refusing to let workers strike after their contract expired earlier this month at the Philadelphia military helicopter plant, the union leadership rammed through an extra-long 5-year contract last week. This pales before the plans discussed at the IAM secret talks — a 10-year no-strike pledge!

Reject Capitalist Illusions; Build A Workers’ Movement

Wroblewski’s e-mail response to the Times article is patently absurd: “There are no ‘secret talks’ …just ongoing discussions.” Calls to the International have resulted in equally unbelievable assurances. “Maybe, we’ll wait till the new contract comes up [in 2012] to consider a 10-year pact,” an international official suggested by way of “reassuring” us. Why believe anything these fascists-in-waiting say? They’re clearly not opposed in principal to disarming us for 10 years.

These “reassurances” negatively affect our ability to fight back. We should not underestimate U.S. rulers’ absolute need to develop fascist control as their empire wanes because of international capitalist rivalry. Many of us may have the vain hope of some negotiated, relatively “peaceful” solution.

For years we’ve followed a certain path: Contracts come every three or four years. Often we strike, trying to stop Boeing from cutting our wages and benefits. Sometimes we even override the union’s sellouts.  But we never break the chains of wage slavery, only fight to change the shape of exploitation.

As fascism is consolidated, these contracts, more than ever, clamp down on class struggle. “You can’t strike. You are under contract,” the Seattle Times editorial gleefully declares, saying we must give in to the bosses’ demands.

Boeing bosses have used racism to contract out work to factories with predominantly immigrant, black and Latino workforces, at poverty wages, a central part of fascism.

Advancing under these conditions requires strengthening the Party’s anti-racist communist political base-building, our CHALLENGE networks and developing the closer personal ties allowing us to struggle for a revolutionary outlook among readers, sellers, their families and friends.

Real gains are harder to come by because of the bosses’ fascist plans. The union misleaders’ snake oil will never spontaneously disappear. As our campaign against this no-strike deal gathers steam, our success will be judged, in part, on how much we can win workers away from capitalist illusions and to our Party. Let’s replace 5, 10, 20 years of building bridges to fascism with 5, 10, 20 years of building for communist revolution! J

BULLETIN — As we go to press, Boeing has abandoned the no-strike talks. U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D.-WA.) and Washington governor Chris Gregorie intervened over the weekend. That led to further direct talks between the IAM general vice-president and Boeing, with the union offering further concessions to get a 10-year pact. The talks’ end most likely means the second 787 production line will be moved to Charleston, S.C., eventually employing 3,800.