model of organizing

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here is an excellent example of organizing for Peter
D.

LA TRANSIT STRIKE FORGES A NEW POLITICAL ALLIANCE By
David Bacon

LOS ANGELES (10/19/00) - For decades, Los Angeles'
bus drivers and bus riders have looked at each other
across the fare box with suspicion and distrust.
Riders have been told by the Metropolitan Transit
Authority that drivers' salaries were behind the
pressure to raise fares. Drivers, in their turn, got
the message that the only way to keep their jobs
secure and make a living was to stick it to riders
in the fare box. Yet when the recent 32-day drivers'
strike ended, its most remarkable achievement was
the new alliance drivers and riders forged against
the MTA. In fact, not only was that alliance
responsible for winning the strike, but it marks a
new shift emerging in the city's balance of power,
based in Los Angeles changing demographics. LA bus
riders are the base of the city's new economy.
Overwhelmingly immigrants from Mexico and Central
America, riders are the room cleaners in downtown
luxury hotels, seamstresses from the garment
sweatshops, day laborers who get jobs on the
streetcorner, domestics riding to work in Beverly
Hills mansions, and janitors taking the late-night
run home from cleaning the city's sparkling glass
office towers. They are the city's poor, its newest
residents, the workers at the bottom of LA's
stratified class structure. A majority of the
drivers, on the other hand, are African-Americans.
Over the last two decades, thousands of Black
workers found themselves in the street when LA's
steel, auto and tire plants closed, and the jobs of
thousands went up in smoke. Driving a bus today is
one of the few secure jobs left, carrying union
benefits and a salary high enough to allow a family
to buy a home. Drivers had an uphill struggle
defending those wages and conditions. As one
picketer said, "there's a lot of resentment out
there against people of color, especially women,
making $50,000 a year." Los Angeles' changing
economy has pitted these two sections of the
workforce against each other. It's political
structure is rife with elected officials who exploit
the consequent hostility. Overcoming this

divide in the course of one of the most bitter labor
disputes in recent memory shows a new level of
sophistication in both communities. What riders and
drivers finally saw clearly was the real reason for
the upward pressure on bus fares - not salaries, but
the huge construction budgets for new rail systems
bringing mostly white commuters in from the

suburbs. The rail system in turn supports further
land development on the city's fringe, the giant
firms paid millions to do the work, and the old

guard of the city's labor movement - the building
trades - who get the construction jobs. When the MTA
went after cuts in bus service to pay for rail, the
Bus Riders Union went to court, winning a consent
decree mandating minimum service levels and better
maintenance on the busses. The transit strike was
originally another defensive battle, waged against
MTA efforts to win further concessions to pay
ballooning construction costs. The authority wanted
to convert hundreds of existing full-time jobs to
part-time, and reduce the salaries paid to the
workers

affected. Limiting overtime was another goal. In
fact, the MTA wanted to require drivers to pilot
their busses through LA's heavy traffic for 13
hours, but get paid for only 10. In the hot LA
housing market, the drivers' 50-55 hour week at
their $21 scale barely makes a mortgage payment.
Drivers aren't the only ones depending increasingly
on overtime to pay the bills. The average U.S. work
week has grown to 43 hours, and

for African-American workers, it stretches a further
nine hours beyond that. Everywhere, longer work
weeks have become an economic necessity. Behind the
economic demands, the MTA sought freedom to break up
the system, spinning off geographic areas into
autonomous units, a precondition for turning
operations over to private contractors. In the first
of these districts, the Foothill District in the San
Gabriel Valley, drivers' wages plummetted to $8.50-
9.30/hour. Their union's challenge to the new system
was defeated by the law firm of Riordan and McKinzie
- headed by LA's Republican Mayor Richard Riordan.
"We've opposed the so-called transit zones from the
very beginning," says Eric Mann, a member of the
planning committee of LA's Bus Riders Union. "We see
them as a move to lower wages, and eventually
privatize the system, bringing service cuts and
higher fares for riders as contractors look for
higher profits. One of the best things coming out of
the strike was that the drivers saw this too." As
soon as the strike started, the riders' union began
organizing big rallies to support the drivers. At
the end of the strike, over 850 drivers signed
letters demanding no cuts in service. "There was a
radical change in the attitude of the drivers
towards the riders' union," Mann explains. "In the
past, their union relied on an insider relationship
with the MTA, and saw us as troublemakers. That's
not true anymore." Miguel Contreras, the first
Latino head of the Los Angeles County Federation of
Labor, came to the drivers' defense as soon as the
strike started. This too broke long-established
political relationships. MTA directors include
county supervisors Gloria Molina and Yvonne
Braithwaite-Burke, staunch Democrats historically
elected with labor votes and dollars. Yet both made
common cause with LA's Republican mayor against the
unions. And instead of siding with the building
trades and MTA management to defend rail
construction, Contreras sided with the drivers and
riders. Big changes have taken shape in LA labor
over the last ten years. Today

the federation's most active unions include
janitors, hotel workers, and

garment workers. Community-based projects organizing
day laborers and domestics have won labor support.
They all had to respond to the needs of their
members as bus riders. Contreras took their side.
Against this alliance, even the governor proved
powerless. In the middle of the strike, Governor
Gray Davis tried to get mechanics and supervisors to
return to work, and cross the drivers' picketlines.
He agreed to sign legislation guaranteeing that for
four years, MTA workers

would keep their jobs, wages and union contracts in
the event of the breakup of the transit system. He
then tried to use the agreement as leverage to get
union leaders to send their members back to work.
The heads of the supervisors' and mechanics' unions
both agreed and told their members to cross the
lines. But the following morning, only eight of over
1800 mechanics crossed. The rest refused. Supported
by Contreras, James Williams, head of the drivers'
local of United Transportation Union, declined the
governor's blandishments. In the process, both
riders and drivers protected the integrity of the
system. Since the agreement prevents the use of
lower wages and broken unions as an incentive, at
least for the next few years, the likelihood is less
that the district will be broken up and privatized.
The settlement which ended the strike was a
compromise. It allows the MTA to begin hiring part-
timers at lower wages. Overtime will be limited, and
management will be able to intervene on work rules.
But these compromises are overshadowed by a new
political truth. The city's low-wage workers showed
themselves willing to defend higher wage-earners.
Latinos made common cause with African-Americans.
Drivers came out against service cuts directed
against working-class bus riders, while rail service for suburban
commuters eats up
precious transit dollars. Just a few months ago,
LA's immigrant janitors fought a celebrated strike
to make drastic improvements in wages and conditions
close to the bottom, the latest in a decade-long series of
rebellions from below. They won the support of the
city's emerging Latino political establishment,
against the downtown old guard. When that movement
came to the support of the drivers, it recognized a
basic common interest. The city's low-wage workers
desperately need the public sector - social welfare,
better public schools, subsidized transportation,
free healthcare and other public services. As LA
county workers today find themselves engaged in a
bitter struggle for wage increases and higher budgets for public
services, this new labor-based alliance has the
power to redefine who will benefit from the city's
new economy.

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----------david bacon - labornet email david bacon
internet: dbacon@xxxxxxxxxxx 1631 channing way
phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703




--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx