SAN FRANCISCO, March 1 — Operators in the MUNI transit system, members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 250a, bucked the national trend of accepting concessions negotiated by union mis-leaders. Almost 60% rejected a union leadership demand that we give back $14 million over two years. The TWU leadership’s newsletter boasted, “We are part of the solution” while admitting to “have already given up over $4.5 million in salary savings due to service cuts and other give-backs.” Momentarily, the TWU leadership has lost its ability to sell “deals” with the ideology of fear, as it collaborates with the city’s ruling class to justify cutbacks.

Following the rejection, operators blocked both a “revote” and hiring an “insider operative from SF Mayor Newsom” for an expensive PR campaign. Instead, they’re organizing a drive to directly reach out to passengers through protests, on the buses and at public meetings. They’re uniting with California public workers on March 4.

A Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) February 28 hearing reflected an atmosphere of class war, with operators and passengers exposing the racist and anti-working-class proposed cuts.

‘No time to breathe...’

In an interview, one operator declared: “Did you blame the tellers when the banks” crashed? Others commented, “The government bails out the rich Bank of America which is foreclosing on our homes — operators should not bail out MUNI”; “The banks created this, let them solve it!” Another said MUNI had “to reach out to transit workers throughout California.”  Others spoke about how the Schedule cuts “rob me of my humanity, no time to pick up the seniors, go to the bathroom, or even breathe.”  Some operators advocated job actions — sick-outs, work-to-rule slowdowns and ultimately strikes. 

Leaflets circulated opposing the union-leadership strategy of “giving up,” demanding that the downtown big business community handle their deficit by paying the Transit Impact Fee. PLP members circulated CHALLENGE articles and leaflets with a class analysis of the transit industry.

Weeks of calculated, racist vilification of the workers ensued in the mass media, among politicians, think-tanks, and the SF MTA (which runs MUNI). Since the ‘60s, driving for MUNI was identified as a “black job.” Now, there are many immigrant workers. In this context, calling paid medical benefits for family members “an undeserved bonus” encourages the idea that these workers are “undeserving.”

• SFMTA president Nolan threatened to double the cost of discounted monthly passes for seniors, the disabled and youth and cut service 10%, without the workers’ give-backs. Ultimately, the discounts were saved but Noland demanded more concessions from workers.  Service cuts impact poorer, isolated, black and Latino neighborhoods and predominately their youth the most as resources are concentrated on rush-hour service.

• “The first and foremost concern for MUNI should be ‘labor reform,’” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the think-tank SPUR” (SF Chronicle, 2/8), meaning less for workers’ wages and benefits, and more speed-up.

• Metcalf and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd called for part-timing driver jobs because they “just sit around doing nothing and get paid” in mid-day (more thinly-veiled racism).

• Elsbernd is using the Ballot Initiative process to mobilize the public against drivers with a Charter amendment to change the process determining drivers’ wages and benefits.

The political direction in this fight to “make the Downtown bosses pay” and for passenger-worker unity comes from the intertwining of communist organizing over many years at MUNI and mass anger among operators over this new stage of attacks on unionized workers.  First the bosses decimated manufacturing as an entry-level job (without college). Now it’s dismantling public-sector jobs like transit with the “deficit” justification that “there’s no money.”

Communists have named the cause — capitalism — during 40 years of class struggle in transit combined with ideological agitation and education. Communists expose the system as one based on competition for maximum profits that motivates these bankers\CEOs, not personality, greed or political party. Inter-imperialist rivalry (capitalists of different nations competing for world domination) is part of the engine of capitalism that drives the deficit. PLP has advanced communist class consciousness over many years at MUNI. That means:

• Uniting with other workers, rejecting the “PR” approach, and going directly to the working-class public; unity with other transit workers; recognizing that our labor creates profits for the Downtown bosses; and job actions can bring them to a halt.

• Recognizing a capitalist class and system dictates this crisis; therefore, they should pay for it.”

• Viewing capitalism as a whole system; the same banks that caused the attacks on our jobs have also foreclosed our houses, cut education, increased medical expenses and the war budget.

• Organizing against U.S. imperialism; opposing the trillions spent on oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and seeing U.S. corporate robbery worldwide as directly hurting U.S. workers.

A friend told people of the impact of communists in the class struggle: “In a washing machine, you have the water, the soap and the clothes but if you don’t have the agitator, you can’t get the dirt out.” Someone else declared, “I’ve heard all this from you before, but now it’s clear what you were talking about.” CHALLENGE distribution and its content played a central role in this ideological struggle, with follow-up and study groups having a critical imapact.

To escalate this battle, we need more communists to make all these connections among our coworkers. Strictly focusing on “just surviving this budget deficit”, as the union leadership does, will not prepare us for the battles ahead as the U.S. capitalist class tries to save itself by destroying workers’ living standards. During this long process, U.S. capitalism’s decline will draw more workers into harder fights. Communists in PLP are in the fight. We will advance the long-term strategy of overthrowing capitalism and constructing a society where transit jobs serve the working class and fulfill many drivers’ aspirations for meaningful work; schedules will be about taking workers where they need to go, not delivering a workforce for the profit needs of the Downtown bosses.

(Next: Communism as a solution to serve the working class in transit.)

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.

BOSTON, MA, February 3 — Two weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, it was standing room only at a meeting of the student club, Pizza and Politics, on our community college campus. The initial comments students made showed very little political consciousness. In response to the first discussion question, “Who or what is to blame for the social catastrophe, besides mother nature?” students thought it was ridiculous to introduce a political analysis of the role of imperialism and capitalism in the catastrophe. Many, including Haitian-Americans, reflected the same racism in their comments that are implied by TV and radio announcers; “Haitians are crazy,” meaning that in the face of chaos, Haitians will resort to a dog-eat-dog mentality.

But students responded very positively when CHALLENGE readers brought in an anti-imperialist perspective, explaining how colonialist and imperialist policies devastated the country and left it vulnerable to mother nature. They spoke of the capitalist-controlled aid efforts, compared Haiti to New Orleans after Katrina, exposed the racism and paternalism of the media. They also spoke of the proud and rebellious history of Haiti’s working class.

By the end of the discussion, some of the same students who initially resisted a political analysis were expressing anger toward all the rich countries of the world and blaming the capitalist system for the devastation in Haiti. A new CHALLENGE reader was heartened at how the discussion clearly progressed “in the direction of communism.”

Many students expressed the desire to organize an aid effort that would bring the aid directly to the people. The club is also planning a forum that will bring political understanding to the campus. PL’ers and our friends have a very important role to play at this working-class, largely immigrant college. The crisis in Haiti gives us an opportunity to expose the racism and utter failure of capitalism and to build international class solidarity — workers helping workers — an antidote to the cynical individualism that students resort to when they don’t see an alternative to capitalist greed and inequality

Obama invaded Haiti to secure U.S. capitalists’ access to energy supplies, not to aid the working class there, as token relief efforts show. (See CHALLENGE, 3/3.) Haiti may itself possess significant oil and gas reserves. Bloomberg News (2/26) reports, “The January 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies including the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface….

“The Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and their offshore waters, probably hold at least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a 2000 report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Undiscovered amounts may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas....”

It’s hardly a coincidence that a month after Cubapetroleo announced discovery of one of the world’s largest oilfields in the deep waters off Cuba, Russian President Medvedev flew to Cuba to sign an agreement to develop Cuban oil. And a week before that, China’s president Hu Jintao met Cuba’s president Raul Castro to sign an agreement to modernize Cuban ports and undoubtedly discussed the country’s oil discovery.

Obama’s Main Target:
Venezuela’s Oil Treasure

But while the jury may be out on Haiti’s possible hydrocarbon bonanza, U.S. rulers have identified nearby enemy Venezuela as potentially another Saudi Arabia. Britain’s government-controlled BBC noted (1/23), amid the U.S. build-up in Haiti, “Scientists working for the U.S. Geological Survey say Venezuela’s Orinoco belt region holds twice as much petroleum as previously thought....[T]he area could yield more than 500 billion barrels of crude oil.... Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of 260 billion barrels.”

By establishing U.S. army, air and naval bases in Haiti moments after the quake, Obama sent a clear message about U.S. military supremacy to his oil-soaked, fake leftist Venezuelan foe Hugo Chavez. To hammer home the point, Obama diverted the first of the Navy’s brand-new fleet of Littoral Combat Ships — specifically designed for U.S. imperialism’s latest naval need for coastal invasion of oil-rich nations — from California to the Caribbean shores of Colombia and Venezuela.

“The USS Freedom (LCS 1), has entered service in the Caribbean, joining the U.S. Navy drug interdiction patrol..... [T]he Freedom headed south on February 15th and [on] the 22nd intercepted its first drug-smuggling boat off the Colombian coast.” (Strategy Page, 2/28) Drugs are secondary to U.S. bosses. They use them to help control their domestic working class. On the other hand, U.S. imperialists use oil to control dependent nations and wage war on rival states.