At the heart of this strike are issues facing all workers and their unions. The transit authority, sitting on a $1 billion surplus, is demanding cuts in health care and pensions. This comes primarily in the form of demanding a two tier pension and health care system for new hires.

TWU local 100 has drawn a line in the sand and stands firm, putting their livelihood on the line for all of labor on this issue. They will not sacrifice younger workers by accepting substandard conditions for new hires. Two tier systems have been a disaster where they have been forced on workers: lowering wages and benefits and dividing workers.

In taking on this critical fight each striker is facing a severe fine equal to two days pay for every day they are on strike. In addition their union, TWU Local 100, is being fined $1 million a day. Local 100 leaders are being threatened with jail and under the infamous anti-union New York Taylor law the local could have check-off taken from it.

New York transit workers need all forms of solidarity. They need to know that the wider labor movement and the wider progressive and peoples movements support them and understand the critical fight they are fighting for us all.

Time is critical our estimate is that this strike will be won or lost in a matter of days not weeks.

What you can do on an emergency basis:

1) Pass the resolution below in your local union, church, peace organization, or community group. (Send it to: Governor George E. Pataki, State Capitol, Albany, NY 12224 or email: http://161.11.3.75/ * Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, City Hall, New York, NY 10007 or email: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html * Peter S. Kalikow, Chairman, MTA, Jamaica Station, Jamaica, N.Y. 11435)

2) Get you union or progressive organization to make a donation to the strikers. (Send donations to: TWU Local 100 Headquarters, 80 West End Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10023

3) Get on talk radio, write a letter to the editor and generally get out the strikers point of view. (See PWW stories below) The major mass media is portraying this as a fight between greedy workers and a strapped transit authority. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki in cahoots with the Transit Authority are trying to make an example of local 100 and use it as a pattern to attack the pensions and health care plans of all public workers in New York. This is part and parcel of the Bush/Republican national attack on pensions, health care and social security. —————————– Draft Resolution supporting New York Transit Workers.

The fight of New York Transit workers is our fight. Their strike is a direct battle against efforts to degrade pensions and healthcare plans for all workers. Sitting on a $1 billion surplus, the transit authority, with the full support of Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki, are demanding a two tier healthcare and pension system. TWU Local 100 is saying no. They refuse to sacrifice new and younger workers!

We, __________________ stand in full solidarity with the New York transit workers and their union. We urge Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki to reverse course and support a just settlement. We urge the Metropolitan Transit Authority to back off demands for a two tier contract and to share the surplus created by the hard work of transit workers in funding a new contract that preserves pensions, healthcare and provides a wage increase.

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From the People’s Weekly World on-line daily edition of 12/21/05:

TRANSIT WORKERS SHOW DETERMINATION, HIGH MORALE By Dan Margolis

BROOKLYN, N.Y. All 34,000 New York Citys bus and subway workers, represented by Transport Workers Union Local 100, walked off the job in the early morning hours of Dec. 20, beginning NYCs first transit strike in 25 years.

According to TWU workers picketing in the cold at the Coney Island subway terminal, they were there for themselves, for future transit workers and for all working-class families.

At 3 p.m., exactly 12 hours after Local 100 leadership called the strike, nearly a hundred workers picketed the Coney Island terminal. According to Edwin Kippins, a motorman for the B and Q lines, over 60 pickets some of them much larger were going on at train and bus yards and terminals all over the citys five boroughs.

Hazel Daley, the picket captain, said that she was proud to be out, and that she felt there was very good morale from the workers and the public alike. We havent seen too many people walking by Coney Island is sort of isolated when the trains and buses arent running but people driving by are showing more support than we expected.

As if to emphasize her point, a line of cars went by moments later, all honking their horns, some with drivers giving the thumbs up sign.

Other drivers asked to take some of our [picket] signs, so that they could display them in their car, Daley said.

No one wants to strike, but everyone interviewed felt it was necessary. The transit workers said that they needed to stand up to the transit authority, which, they say, treats them with contempt.

Although it is running a $1 billion surplus, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that controls the trains and buses, demanded a two-tier pension system, where new workers would pay more toward their pension than current workers for their first 10 years of service. It also wants new workers to pay more for health care benefits.

Its a divide-and-conquer strategy that [the MTA] is pulling, Daryl Ramsey, motorman on the Q and D trains told the World. How can you have a worker paying 6 percent of his salary to his pension, while another worker, hired only two months before, is paying only 2 percent? Thats going to be divisive. Ramsey also said that such a disparity is simply unjust.

Another picketer named Sterling held up the back of his digital camera for this reporter to view. Look at that, he said, pointing to an image that showed a filthy, overflowing toilet. Thats the toilet were supposed to use at the 145th street station [on the B line] in Manhattan. Pointing out another picture, which showed a room with a filthy layer of slime on the ground, the worker explained that it was their lunch area at the same station. The slime on the ground, he explained, was raw sewage that came out of the toilet in the previous picture, when it backed up.

Kippins said this strike, if successful, would benefit all workers. They are slowly chipping away at the benefits of everyone, especially public employees, he said. The fire department, the police department if we lose, theyre the next to get hit, and they know that.

Daley said that she sensed a lot of support from other sections of labor. This support was on view the night before, at a rally of thousands of people to support the TWU. At the rally, leaders of public and private unions, including the City University professors, the building trades, Unite Here, the Screen Actors Guild, the Teachers Union and others all came out to pledge support in the event of a strike.

Daley pointed to a group of police officers who were there and said that they had been very friendly and supportive. Their union, the Patrolmans Benevolent Association, supports the TWU. One of the officers, when questioned, said that he was on duty, and was not allowed to say he supported the strike.

The workers are under fierce assault. The mayor, the governor, and many others are demanding that the Taylor Law be enforced. This law fines public workers two days pay for every day on strike.

There are some things higher than the law, TWU President Roger Toussaint told the previous nights demonstration. One of those things is justice. If Rosa Parks had obeyed the law, many of us who drive the buses would have to sit in back of them.

One of the Coney Island workers said that he was willing to pay the fines, if push came to shove.

Its worth it, he said. Ive been working for the MTA for eight years. I have decades to go. Its worth it. We have to draw the line.

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