Striking for the Middle Class
by Andrew Stettner, December 24, 2005
For 3 days, the Transit Workers Union strike shut down New York City’s subways and buses, grinding the city to a near standstill. The media coverage focused on the inconveniences of stranded straphangers and a war of words between politicians and union leaders. However, the media missed the true meaning of this contract debate: the future of the middle class in New York City, and more broadly in the United States.
New York’s Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, perfectly framed this meaning in the New York Times (December 20th).
Mr. Bloomberg said that a walkout would hurt many workers in the hotel, restaurant and garment industries who earn less than the transit workers. The transit workers average $55,000 a year with overtime.
"You've got people making $50,000 and $60,000 a year - are keeping the people who are making $20,000 and $30,000 a year from being able to earn a living," Mr. Bloomberg said. "That's just not acceptable."
Here you have the ‘unacceptable’ vision of our Mayor for working class New Yorkers – jobs that pay less than $30,000. New York City’s economy is growing strongly – but it is growing unevenly, with high paying jobs and lower paying jobs increasing at the same time. From 2000 to 2004, New York City’s middle class (families earning between $35,000 and $150,000 per year) declined at a rate that was four times the national average according to New York’s Fiscal Policy Institute.
The problem is that a family cannot really live on $30,000 in the New York City, with housing and other costs skyrocketing. For example, according to a detailed analysis prepared for the Women’s Center for Education and Career Advancement, a family of one child and one adult needs to earn $42,000 to be self-sufficient in Queens, while a family of four would need $58,000.
Middle Class Life at Stake In New York City
That’s what makes jobs like those at New York City Transit so vital to the city’s health. According to most media reports, the average New York City Transit worker earns between $47,000 and $55,000. While the earnings are modest, the job comes with good health care and retirement benefits.
What do middle class jobs provide our city? At these wages, working families don’t have to depend on publicly funded work supports like Medicaid or Child Health plus that are being stretched by a shrinking tax base. MTA jobs are giving Caribbean and Latino families the kind of opportunities that made Irish-Americans and other European newcomers a mainstay of the region’s middle class. Low-wage workers support the existence of better paying jobs because they provide an attainable ladder to the middle class.
What Wages Do Transit Workers “Deserve”?
Do transit workers deserve these wages? Transit workers do thankless and dangerous work. Bus drivers face hostile customers and murderous traffic all day. Subway workers toil in dark, vermin-infested, century-old subway tunnels. A mistake by a New York City transit worker can meant life or death mistake for riders or the worker. Since World War II, 132 track workers have been electrocuted or killed by trains in the New York subways, 21 in the last two decades.i
Basic necessities, like the ability to go to the bathroom, are a luxury for transit workers. Not only do they deserve these wages, but Transit workers should be exactly the kind of workers who should be able to hold on to a middle class way of life in the 21st century, unlike manufacturing workers threatened by globalization.
Knowledge-driven, high-wage, service-sector economies like that of New York City depend on a web of effective mass transit. Indeed, the recovery of the subway from its graffiti-ridden past was crucial to New York City’s rebirth from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Because of a surge in population and public transit usage, the MTA now has a nearly $1 billion surplus this year. The MTA can afford to sustain a fair living wage for the workers that operate the system, and competitive pressures are in favor of this continued middle class niche.
The Contract on the Table and Its Repercussions
The strike was triggered by MTA’s final offer of wage increases 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent. This represented an improvement over an initial deal of 2 percent, the media reported this as a better deal than what was initially presented. This “raise” proposal is really no raise at all. Inflation is running at 3.5 percent in Northeastern cities, so this salary increase would leave workers treading water. In exchange for a zero percent real raise, TWU had been asked to take a big cut in retirement security by lowering the retirement age from 62 to 55. It was a final offer that was really no offer at all.
But, my guess is that the MTA thought that the TWU might blink and take the deal. There had not been a transit strike in 25 years, and the union and its workers faced huge fines for carrying out a strike that violated the state’s Taylor Law. But if the TWU had simply accepted the deal it have would set the scale downward for all upcoming New York municipal contracts. And, such deal could have caused race to the bottom to spread to service sector jobs like health care and building services that have a chance to pay decent wages to working people in a globalized age.
Striking for the Middle Class
In the face of a bad deal, the TWU decided to draw a line in the sand for middle class New Yorkers--not just for dollars and cents. Transit worker members talked about striking for dignity and respect, as workers who have gotten little as compared other public servants. TWU President Roger Toussaint refused to “sacrifice the TWU’s unborn” by agreeing to a two-tier contract that would cut benefits for new workers while keeping them intact for the current workforce. The battle lines of the strike were most clearly drawn when Toussaint responded to the Mayor’s racially tinged characterization of the TWU as thugs and lawbreakers by invoking Rosa Parks and declaring “There is a higher calling than the law. That is justice and equality."
But, the end of this story has not been written, as the contract has not been settled. At worst, the union seems to have fought the MTA to a draw. The final wage deal will certainly be better than the 2 percent initially presented by the MTA. And, while the MTA did not drop pension security from the talks, reports are that they agreed to back down as a condition of the ending the strike.
The headlines of Friday’s New York Daily News is “Nobody Wins.” They too missed the boat. The Transit Workers Union took a great risk—and we all feared that they would have to go back with a terrible deal or no deal at all in sight. But, regardless of the final outcome, TWU members have won what they sought out to get—respect. They proved that even in the 21st century, working people cannot always be pushed around by their bosses and bought off by their immediate self-interest. The TWU members were willing to give up nine days of pay to win that victory for the middle class, and it is one that we all should cherish.
[i] New York Times, November 26, 2002
For 3 days, the Transit Workers Union strike shut down New York City’s subways and buses, grinding the city to a near standstill. The media coverage focused on the inconveniences of stranded straphangers and a war of words between politicians and union leaders. However, the media missed the true meaning of this contract debate: the future of the middle class in New York City, and more broadly in the United States.
New York’s Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, perfectly framed this meaning in the New York Times (December 20th).
Mr. Bloomberg said that a walkout would hurt many workers in the hotel, restaurant and garment industries who earn less than the transit workers. The transit workers average $55,000 a year with overtime.
"You've got people making $50,000 and $60,000 a year - are keeping the people who are making $20,000 and $30,000 a year from being able to earn a living," Mr. Bloomberg said. "That's just not acceptable."
Here you have the ‘unacceptable’ vision of our Mayor for working class New Yorkers – jobs that pay less than $30,000. New York City’s economy is growing strongly – but it is growing unevenly, with high paying jobs and lower paying jobs increasing at the same time. From 2000 to 2004, New York City’s middle class (families earning between $35,000 and $150,000 per year) declined at a rate that was four times the national average according to New York’s Fiscal Policy Institute.
The problem is that a family cannot really live on $30,000 in the New York City, with housing and other costs skyrocketing. For example, according to a detailed analysis prepared for the Women’s Center for Education and Career Advancement, a family of one child and one adult needs to earn $42,000 to be self-sufficient in Queens, while a family of four would need $58,000.
Middle Class Life at Stake In New York City
That’s what makes jobs like those at New York City Transit so vital to the city’s health. According to most media reports, the average New York City Transit worker earns between $47,000 and $55,000. While the earnings are modest, the job comes with good health care and retirement benefits.
What do middle class jobs provide our city? At these wages, working families don’t have to depend on publicly funded work supports like Medicaid or Child Health plus that are being stretched by a shrinking tax base. MTA jobs are giving Caribbean and Latino families the kind of opportunities that made Irish-Americans and other European newcomers a mainstay of the region’s middle class. Low-wage workers support the existence of better paying jobs because they provide an attainable ladder to the middle class.
What Wages Do Transit Workers “Deserve”?
Do transit workers deserve these wages? Transit workers do thankless and dangerous work. Bus drivers face hostile customers and murderous traffic all day. Subway workers toil in dark, vermin-infested, century-old subway tunnels. A mistake by a New York City transit worker can meant life or death mistake for riders or the worker. Since World War II, 132 track workers have been electrocuted or killed by trains in the New York subways, 21 in the last two decades.i
Basic necessities, like the ability to go to the bathroom, are a luxury for transit workers. Not only do they deserve these wages, but Transit workers should be exactly the kind of workers who should be able to hold on to a middle class way of life in the 21st century, unlike manufacturing workers threatened by globalization.
Knowledge-driven, high-wage, service-sector economies like that of New York City depend on a web of effective mass transit. Indeed, the recovery of the subway from its graffiti-ridden past was crucial to New York City’s rebirth from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Because of a surge in population and public transit usage, the MTA now has a nearly $1 billion surplus this year. The MTA can afford to sustain a fair living wage for the workers that operate the system, and competitive pressures are in favor of this continued middle class niche.
The Contract on the Table and Its Repercussions
The strike was triggered by MTA’s final offer of wage increases 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent. This represented an improvement over an initial deal of 2 percent, the media reported this as a better deal than what was initially presented. This “raise” proposal is really no raise at all. Inflation is running at 3.5 percent in Northeastern cities, so this salary increase would leave workers treading water. In exchange for a zero percent real raise, TWU had been asked to take a big cut in retirement security by lowering the retirement age from 62 to 55. It was a final offer that was really no offer at all.
But, my guess is that the MTA thought that the TWU might blink and take the deal. There had not been a transit strike in 25 years, and the union and its workers faced huge fines for carrying out a strike that violated the state’s Taylor Law. But if the TWU had simply accepted the deal it have would set the scale downward for all upcoming New York municipal contracts. And, such deal could have caused race to the bottom to spread to service sector jobs like health care and building services that have a chance to pay decent wages to working people in a globalized age.
Striking for the Middle Class
In the face of a bad deal, the TWU decided to draw a line in the sand for middle class New Yorkers--not just for dollars and cents. Transit worker members talked about striking for dignity and respect, as workers who have gotten little as compared other public servants. TWU President Roger Toussaint refused to “sacrifice the TWU’s unborn” by agreeing to a two-tier contract that would cut benefits for new workers while keeping them intact for the current workforce. The battle lines of the strike were most clearly drawn when Toussaint responded to the Mayor’s racially tinged characterization of the TWU as thugs and lawbreakers by invoking Rosa Parks and declaring “There is a higher calling than the law. That is justice and equality."
But, the end of this story has not been written, as the contract has not been settled. At worst, the union seems to have fought the MTA to a draw. The final wage deal will certainly be better than the 2 percent initially presented by the MTA. And, while the MTA did not drop pension security from the talks, reports are that they agreed to back down as a condition of the ending the strike.
The headlines of Friday’s New York Daily News is “Nobody Wins.” They too missed the boat. The Transit Workers Union took a great risk—and we all feared that they would have to go back with a terrible deal or no deal at all in sight. But, regardless of the final outcome, TWU members have won what they sought out to get—respect. They proved that even in the 21st century, working people cannot always be pushed around by their bosses and bought off by their immediate self-interest. The TWU members were willing to give up nine days of pay to win that victory for the middle class, and it is one that we all should cherish.
[i] New York Times, November 26, 2002
posted by Andrew Stettner at 5:54 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Andrew, great blog. I just got the email from NELP at work and I've bookmarked you.
I know it's a bit late, but you might be interested in the post I blogged about the transit strike right after they settled. Here's the link
While you're at it, take a look around and feel free to link to my blog from yours.
Jack McCullough
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