New York City transit workers defiant: “Bloomberg and his friends are the thugs, not us”

Despite the disruptive impact of the strike on millions of transit users, working people throughout the city showed sympathy for the striking workers, with passing cars honking their horns in support, bicycle riders expressing solidarity, and workers and high school students visiting the picket lines. This stood in sharp contrast to the picture the news media has tried to paint of a city enraged at “selfish” transit workers.

At the same time there was a heavy police presence at the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) locations, aimed at intimidating strikers. Police ordered the picketers to stay on the sidewalk, set up wooden barricades to pen them in and told strikers to extinguish the fires in oil drums they lit to stay warm. These actions were in line with Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to criminalize transit workers, whom he denounced as being “thuggish.”

At a train depot near downtown Brooklyn, Chas, a train operator who has worked for the MTA for 22 years, said, “The MTA has to stop hurting us poor folk and trying to take back the little bit that we have. Who is this [MTA boss] Kalikow? I’d like to know, what is his track record, his qualifications for his job that pays so well? I’d like to know what raises Kalikow gets. But you never hear about that in the press, who this Kalikow is. We are just trying to survive like the rest of the working class.

“Everything in the Post is slanted toward Bloomberg and Kalikow and against the workers; they’re all just cronies, and the editors tell them what to print.”

Chas felt strongly that the hypocrisy of billionaires like Kalikow and Bloomberg attacking the pensions of workers who are struggling needed to be exposed, and the audacity of management, “which one day tells us they don’t have any money for raises, and the next day turns up millions of dollars.” He felt the union bureaucracy should also be scrutinized. “Someone should look into how the unions have been diminished. I’m sure they’re having private meetings behind closed doors. We don’t know what deals they’re making. As for the TWU International—put the rat in front of the International for selling us out. What’s the reason? Politics is the reason. But where are all your politicians? Not one of them has come out to support us.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/news-d22.shtml