AUT: Taxi drivers (fwd)

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Profit Margin)]

>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Date:         Fri, 22 May 1998 19:51:19 -0400
>Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L@xxxxxxxx>
>Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L@xxxxxxxx>
>From: Tom Patterson <ac119@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject:      Taxi drivers (fwd)
>To: LABOR-L@xxxxxxxx
>Status:
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 09:47:33 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Andrew J. English <aenglish@xxxxxxx>
>
>>From Newsday, May 20, 1998
>
>These Hacks Ain't Yellow
>
>Ellis Henican
>
>The conventional wisdom looked at Biju Mathew and laughed.
>
>New York taxi drivers, the conventional wisdom said, will never get
>organized.
>
>Too many languages. Too many ethnic groups. Too many
>independent-minded personalities to agree on anything. Too many recent
>immigrants, more concerned about earning a dollar than joining anybody's
>political cause. Even their own.
>
>That's what the conventional wisdom always said.
>
>So how come 90-plus percent of city taxi drivers stayed home last
>Wednesday? And how come the mayor and the titans of the taxi trade were
>both in such a lather yesterday, trying to maneuver through conflicting
>signals about a second taxi protest scheduled for tomorrow?
>
>"Everybody was surprised by what happened on the 13th, everybody but
>us," Biju Mathew was saying at midday. "We were not surprised at all. We
>knew we had a big strike on our hands. We know how to communicate with
>the drivers. We know what is on their minds."
>
>And now, it's time time to ask the follow-ups: Will last week's
>success carry over to this week? Or will taxi-driver unity disappear as
>quickly as it came?
>
>Biju Mathew smiles and shakes his head.
>
>A soft-spoken, 35-year-old Ph.D from Hyderabad in southern India,
>Mathew has never driven a taxi, in New York or anywhere. His eyesight is
>too weak to pass the test. But not his organizing skill. Over the past
>two years, he and his colleagues in a ragtag group now known as the New
>York Taxi Workers Alliance were quietly organizing the
>impossible-to-organize.
>
>With staff director Bhairavi Desai, Mathew helped to put together
>this multi-ethnic group of "lease drivers," the ones who don't own their
>own $300,000 medallions but rent their cabs for $100 to $115 per 12-hour
>shift. They are the workhorses of the taxi business, the ones with the
>very least to lose.
>
>"In the taxi industry, the old formula for organizing will not work;
>the hierarchical leadership and all of that," said Mathew, who has no
>formal title with the group but was (say others, not he) the key
>strategist behind last week's success.  "We have very simple notions of
>democracy around here."
>
>Constant two-way communication is the key. In 24 hours, a message
>can reach every taxi driver in New York.
>
>"The restaurants are enormously important," he said, offering a
>rare, inside glimpse at street-level taxi politics in New York. "The CB
>channels. The shift-change locations. Houston Street between Broadway
>and Lafayette between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. One thousand to 2,000
>cabs will show up there. Each one of those people is tied to other
>informal networks."
>
>And that's not all.
>
>"Meetings late at night work very, very well," he said. "It's a fact
>of the industry that, at 1 or 1:30 or 2 in the morning, business really
>slacks off. Drivers are willing to say, `If I stay on the road, I'll
>only make another 12 or 15 dollars. So OK, I'll go to the meeting.'"
>
>As he spoke, Mathew was sitting on the 10th floor of an old
>garment-center building on West 27th Street, where the Taxi Alliance has
>a phone, a fax machine and a desk. In the world of labor organizing, he
>does not quite look the part in his brown sandals, beard and
>loose-fitting kurta shirt. His doctorate, he said, comes from the
>University of Pittsburgh. He earns his living as an assistant professor
>of information systems at Rider College in New Jersey. His taxi
>organizing is strictly volunteer.
>
>But wait!
>
>New developments were now unfolding downtown.
>
>Tomorrow's planned protest, a taxi procession from Astoria to City
>Hall, was suddenly called off. That event was being organized not by the
>Taxi Workers Alliance  -  but by the United Yellow Cab Drivers
>Association, which mainly represents drivers who own their own
>medallions. The Taxi Alliance was in a support role this time, urging
>its people to join the other group's procession  -  or at least stay
>home again.
>
>Under heavy pressure from Rudy Giuliani, the owner-driver group
>blinked.
>
>So was the stay-at-home call still on, Mathew was asked? Not for
>now, he said. Come what may from City Hall, he promised, his group will
>be prepared.
>
>The medallion owners may get jittery, he said, each time the mayor
>roars. But not the lease drivers.
>
>"The lease drivers really do have nothing to lose here," said this
>organizer of the impossible-to-organize. "Our people have no fear any
>more. We have a right to protest. That's the law. No one, not even the
>mayor, can take that away."
>
>Copyright 1998, Newsday Inc.
>
>These Hacks Ain't Yellow., 05-20-1998, pp A07.




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