NEW YORK, NY, February 28 — The MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) is threatening a wave of racist attacks on the city’s transit riders and workers. The agency claims an $800 million budget deficit and is demanding cuts to student metro-cards, layoffs and a possible fare hike in 2011. The MTA also appealed a legally binding arbitration award for city bus and subway workers, denying them raises.
In every attack — student metro-cards, the fare increases and the workers’ contract — black, Latino and immigrant workers are the majority affected. New York State Governor David Paterson, its first black governor, even floated the idea of raising taxes in the city where it would affect mostly black and Latino workers to pay for commuter rails ridden mainly by white people from the suburbs.
The problem is capitalism — not corruption or mis-management (see box at right). The prosperity of the ruling class depends on the misery of the working class and racist super-exploitation. PLP participates in every fight-back to unite the world’s working class for communist revolution. Under communism workers will organize mass transportation for our needs, not Wall Street’s profits. PLP has organized students to oppose cuts to their metro-cards and fights to unite workers and students against the MTA and the racist capitalism system.
A new leadership took office on New Year’s Day in the Transport Workers Union Local 100. They promised mass militant anti-boss action. After the new leadership’s first week on the job they downed more than 20 buses in one day in one barn during a union safety inspection. The message to the MTA and transit workers is that the fight between management and the union is on. But workers who spoke with a CHALLENGE reporter say that’s how the old union president, Roger Toussaint, started; “then he screwed us like everybody else.” Toussaint, once a self-described radical, proved to be a collaborator with management. He called off the December 2005 transit strike just days before the Christmas Holidays and forced workers to accept a post-strike contract with significant give-backs.
Just like Toussaint, the new union leadership promotes the idea of “good politicians” who are workers’ friends. But under capitalism, politicians around the world openly opposed workers during strikes — often illegal and violent — that won some workers’ unions safety rules, medical benefits and pensions. And the bosses use their state power to eventually reverse these gains.
Many transit workers want the union to fight for more safety, wages and benefits. We know that the bosses use unions to cool down struggle and mislead workers. As we struggle inside the union and out, to organize workers to fight the bosses’ cuts, we are bringing communist ideas into the battle. Transit workers must unite with students and other workers, not politicians who keep debt service payments to banks as a law (see box). Lasting victory can only come by building a movement to overthrow capitalism and establish a communist worker-led society with no profit and exploitation. J
The MTA: Wall Street’s ATM
A Track Equipment Maintainer Kevin Maloney explained in a letter to the civil-service newspaper “The Chief” (10/09), the real cause of the MTA’s budget woes is “debt service,” not out-of-control labor costs.
Riders, mainly black and Latino and immigrant workers, pay 55% of the MTA’s funds. To fill the budget gap created by 20 years of cuts to government funding, lawmakers and the MTA bosses colluded with major banks to borrow money in the form of bonds. In 2010 alone “substantially in excess” of $920 million dollars will go to “debt service,” paying the interest on those bonds
(mta.info). 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.” The MTA projects’ average annual debt service payments will amount to $1.9 billion dollars a year through 2030. (“MTA Investor Information,” mta.info). That’s nearly one of every four dollars of the MTA budget. And all of these payments are legal requirements under New York State law!
Capitalist competition, not individual greed, forces the MTA’s bosses to maximize debt-service profits for banks. Increased military and economic rivalry between imperialists — the world’s most powerful capitalist nations — is forcing bosses around the globe to exploit “their” workers harder than competitors. Banks and politicians using a public agency to maximize private revenue is in line with U.S. bosses’ strategy to maintain supremacy against rising powers like China, Russia and the European Union.
