The strike is over : Race, class and the last of the big strikes

Hal Friedman over at The Daily Gotham explained to me how the Taylor Laws wa passed to make government unions legal. What did they have to relinquish for the right to unionize? You got it, the right to strike. The strike was illegal, but we have had strikes and slowdowns by city government workers before. This time around demographics changed everything and I don't think that it's a coincidence that the Transit Workers Union was one of the few labor unions to endorse Fernando Ferrer.

Fernando Ferrer represents the dream of "Middle Class America" to a lot of Latinos in New York City. The Transit Workers Union has become the anchor of minorities in the city's labor movement. The TWU represents in many ways the dream of getting up from some of the most menial and thankless jobs in New York City and through the doors of the working middle class ranks; just like white minorities have done since the 1930s when Italian, Polish, Irish and countless European Jews did in the last century.

Still showing signs of good journalism, The New York Times just published today an excellent article that explores the racist overtones of the media and government attacks against the union:

[via Race Bubbles to the Surface in Standoff - New York Times]:

But for all the accusations and counter-accusations, clues of a simmering racial tension have hovered over the contract negotiations between the union and the transit authority all along.

Mr. Toussaint, for instance, continued yesterday to cast the strike as part of a broader movement for social justice and invoked the civil rights movement, as he often does in his calls to respect the dignity of his workers. "Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would instead be at the back of the bus," he said.

Mr. Toussaint added that he was the one who pointed out that the authority did not honor the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The authority, in its offer on Monday night, agreed to create such a holiday, an action estimated to cost $9 million a year. Indeed, the politics of the strike are in some ways embedded in the broader demographic changes in the city. Mr. Toussaint, who is originally from Trinidad, leads a union, now dominated by blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans, whose members were once mostly of European descent.

"Clearly race is a subtext of much of what has happened in city politics, in the ethnic succession within unions and city agencies," said Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor at the Baruch School of Public Affairs, who said he saw nothing inherently racial in the use of the term thuggish.

Among members of the Transport Workers Union, however, there is a real and bitter sense that city leaders speak of them differently from members of other unions, like those of police officers and firefighters, whose memberships are whiter.

New York Daily News, of all newspapers, has been incredibly dissapointing in the tone and the level of outright prejudice thrown the way of Roger Toussaint, head of the Transit Workers Union. They called for his head, to put him behind bars for being arrogant and not wanting to back-down :

[via New York Daily News - Home - Editorials: Stop the strike dead in its tracks]:

Pataki and Bloomberg must ask a judge to:

# Jail Toussaint and his bull-headed lieutenants.

# Impose fines on the TWU that double daily and are large enough to bankrupt the union within days.

# Hit every transit worker who walks with a penalty of two days' pay for every day out, as the law allows.

Now, mind you, this paper is the home of writers like Juan Gonzalez, ER Shipp and Stanley Crouch. This is not a "whites only" newspaper at all. Actually, I find their mix of opinion writers one of the best in the nation. But still, I am appalled at how vitriolic that paper turned against Toussaint. And it reminded me of the lamentations coming from Schwarzenegger about Toukie Smith and that Apprentice black guy who was booted because he was too ambitious and assertive.

Are we down a pattern here?

What is going on with these sly attacks on black men, their judgement and assertiveness and their lack of humility in the face of other men of power?

TWU had a blog and they had to close comments due to the racist nature of a lot of what was posted there. It just made your stomach turn. Strikes and protestations of fair pay are good for unions as long as they do not benefit people of color?

But to come back to Ferrer; let me make a connection here between his failed bid for Mayor and now the close to failed bid for better pension terms for the TWU: They have both failed because they have very little or no influence on the local mass media.

Political activism by minorities and the working class has been thoroughly smeared, diminished and even ridiculed by the local mass media; from the Grey Lady to fish-wrapping rags such as New York Post. Our minority leaders were comfortable with the idea they could get on TV any time they wanted. This is true with Ferrer, who became an almost weekly fixture of local news and commentary shows. Then he decided to run for mayor.

You have the same situation with Toussaint. TWU is a pretty big union and certainly powerful due to the nature of their jobs. But look at the mess of their communications support structure. They open a blog on Blogger?!?! Are they out of their minds!

No advance conversations with local grassroots media or bloggers came from their offices. With Ferrer's campaign it was worse because it is an ill kept secret that people from numerous liberal blogs, this one included, called and badgered their campaign for at least a conference call. And at each and every step Ferrer's communication's manager cowered and backed out of arranged meetings and or opportunities to spread the gospel according to Fernando.

The Ferrer communications people ought to be run out of town for how poorly they connected with the grassroots and bloggers. And I don't care how much or how little money they had. Had they talked to us, BlogPAC would most certainly have tried to raise money for him but their obtuseness and outright cowardice prevented them from taking the ball and running with a non-traditional roll-up your sleeves campaign.

Left-wing Latino and minority politicians better learn from this experience : You're not walking in the front door of the MSM. If you are a colored hatemonger like Michelle Malkin, that's one thing. If you are a Roger Toussaint talking about union rights and social justice, that's a whole different situation.

The grassroots need to revisit who they are, what they do and what do they look like. Even though all unionized labor is going to have to learn the hard way that they are not mainstream anymore; it is going to be a more pressing issue for the unionized colored left.

Labor unions had a good thing going there up until the 80s. Compromises like the Taylor laws, the union busting accelerated during the Reagan years and the WalMartization of blue collar jobs with the off-shoring of white collar ones have brought their years of brute force glory to an end. Unions, just like all of the left-wing grassroots, are going to have to learn to be more lithe, flexible.

Creating a new grassroots media network ought to be on the top of their "to do" list.

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