The workers have faced not only the mayor, but the media and their own leaders, the concessionary contract was negotiated and supported by them. What good are leaders who, when you are threatened by your enemies, agree with the threats? This is quite a formidable combination. Is this how the US military works? Not likely, attacks on US troops are met with extreme violence.
The San Francisco Chronicle prepares the ground by building public animosity toward the MUNI drivers and public sector workers in general. The MUNI driver's refusal to cut their own throats meant that they were taking “….money intended to stop a proposed increase in discounted passes for seniors, youth and the disabled and to blunt service cuts…..” the Chronicle wrote earlier this year. All the thieving and corruption that goes on as the contractors, business and various other sections of the capitalist class get their noses deep in the public trough and the transit drivers are to blame for capital's refusal to provide free public transit.
The city is about to charge workers for parking their cars at work in order to save money. According to todays San Francisco Chronicle, the fees will amount to about a third of the driver's 5.75% raise, the one they refused to donate to the bankers and speculators who control city government so they're going after it another way. These are respectable fellows, they would not break the law and deny the workers a legally mandated raise, not quite so blatantly anyway.
The drivers are also being forced to give up standby pay. I used to work overtime and standby was worse than working. At least when you were at work you were there, but with standby, you were tied to the beeper or the phone for a week and would be disciplined and eventually fired for not responding. Sure workers get paid for doing that, why shouldn't we?
"They had two opportunities to help out voluntarily, but chose to take a pay increase instead," "Now they are getting the opportunity to help out involuntarily." Tony Winnicker from the mayor's office tells the Chronicle. It fills you with frustration on the one hand and anger on the other to have to listen to such bullying and even gloating remarks from some flunky for the business community and our so called leaders say nothing; if they say anything at all it will be to agree with our enemies and help them force us to lower our living standards.
Oh no, wait, I read that the Union officials are threatening to talk to lawyers about it. We don't need Unions, we have lawyers. It was after all, lawyers that built the trade Union movement. Didn't lawyers lead the San Francisco, Toledo and Minneapolis General Strikes that shook US society in 1934 and paved the way for the huge upsurge and and factory occupations that led to the formation of the CIO and the social legislation that we benefit from today.
Am I wrong?
4 comments:
I just saw a short clip on the local news about the MUNI drivers. The anchor person introduces the report about the drivers having to pay $80 a month to park now in their own workplace yards.
"These are the same drivers who refused to give up their "hefty raises" the anchorperson says. The use of the term "hefty" is no accident is it.
Then it shifts to the field and a reporter's mike is seen stuck in the face of one of the MUNI drivers who is being asked by the reporter, "If you can drive the buses why can't you ride to work on them?"
I wonder if the reporter takes the bus to work.
The news is neutral isn't it?
look at all the coverage the cop who was shot in Oakland is getting. I am not saying its good to shoot cops or anything like that but people suffer terrible hardship because of things politicians do and the cops protect them.
I was at the Acorn protest at that house in West Oakland which is where I first learned about this blog and the cops were there to make sure the banks had their way when they threw the residents out.
The news covers that for a second or so, not like when cops get hurt.
Great blog. Transit workers are routinely slandered in the press. Meanwhile, transit is purposely mismanaged. The oil, auto, and sprawl profiteers want transit NOT to work.
Well, that's true fpteditors. You are so right. Look at what GM did to all the electronic tram systems they had in Oakland and around the country.
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