NY Transit Wildcat! Strike

You know you are doing something right, when the national Union tells the workers not to strike, and they do. It's now a Wildcat Strike. When the Mayor and management won't bargain fairly and force the strike and then turn around cry crisis and call in the courts.

The union "has violated the laws of our land by defying an order of the court," Bloomberg said.

Where the workers defy the court order, accept the #1 million dollar fine, no wonder the national is upset, and continue the strike. Way to Go TWU Local 100. They even have Libertarians on side. And at least one Canadian Blogging Tory who sez;

Maybe I'm cynical, but it seems to me that the level of support for a strike has nothing to do with the issues involved, and everything to do with the level of inconvenience it causes locals.

This is a union that is made up of Afro and Latino Americans. Hmmm wonder if that has anything to do with managements failure to negotiate fairly. And the leadership is made up of a rank and file reform movement that has persued a policy of democratizing the union local. Gee no wonder their national is upset, union democracy, can't have that.

NEW YORK -- When city transit workers chose Roger Toussaint as their president five years ago, they knew exactly who they were getting. Toussaint had honed his defiant style for years as a leader of a rebel faction whose positions sometimes seemed like militancy for its own sake.

The New Directions Caucus ultimately wrested control of the Transport Workers Union from its old guard leadership. And now, Toussaint has taken his 33,700 subway and bus workers into the New York streets despite bitter weather, a lack of support from the parent union, and court-ordered fines of $1 million a day under the state law barring strikes by public employee unions.

When the state controls the business,(public services) then uses their power to make laws and their courts as weapons against workers, the workers are not breaking any laws that they have any say in.

As I wrote on the B.C. Teachers strike, workers have the inherent right to strike, this is guranteed under the ILO and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. When the state makes laws outlawing a strike it is because the State is in a conflict of interest, it is the owner of the enterprize that the workers are striking against. It is also illegal.

Jerry Lampert, president of the B.C. Business Council, "They are flouting the law. They are leading us down the road of anarchy.

Sounds familiar, eh.

Workers only strike as a last resort, and when they do its because the other side is NOT bargaining. And as soon as they do, well all the hacks come out of the woodwork and declare their actions a threat to society, law and order, blah blah.

The real source of the publics inconveniance is the failure of the employer to bargain fairly forcing the workers to strike. Hoping to use the State and its courts to win what it can't get at the bargaining table.


More labour stories here and here

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