Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

Unions Seek to Pry Loose Transit Stimulus Funding At National Transit Meeting On Feb 27th

Unions Seek to Pry Loose Transit Stimulus Funding

Eye on Operational Needs
By ARI PAUL

LARRY HANLEY: Only Feds can help.

Representatives of transit unions from around the country gathered Feb. 27 at the headquarters of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ to discuss a national strategy to get the Federal Government to pump more money into mass transit, specifically for operational use.

Amalgamated Transit Union Vice President Larry Hanley said that transit systems in every major metropolitan area are facing layoffs—the Chicago Transit Authority has already laid off 1,100 workers—and that while the Federal Government has put stimulus money into transit, it has been restricted to capital construction budgets rather than day-today use.

‘Feds Handicapped Transit’

“They handicapped transit by saying that that money was restricted to new construction,” Mr. Hanley said of Congress and the White House.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Restrictions hurting systems.

As a result of the six-hour meeting, he said, transit union leaders and reps agreed that they needed a national lobbying campaign for more Federal money that would also involve working closely with rider advocacy and environmental groups.

YouTube - NYC TWU Local 100 Pres. John Samuelsen denounces MTA proposed service cuts, job elimination-"Targeted Attack Against New York Workers And Their Families"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs1R_HrWRkI&feature=player_embedded

TWU Local 100 Pres. John Samuelsen denounces MTA proposed service cuts, job elimination

3,000 NYC TWU 100 Workers and Transit Supports Rally And Speak Out Against Attacks "Hell no, Mr. Walder."
http://www.twulocal100.org/node/3743

Outside MTA Public Hearings, The Union’s Voice Rings Out

A powerful rally on March 4 put over 3,000 TWU Local 100 members in the streets outside the MTA’s Manhattan Public Hearing at FIT. We were joined by a large contingent of high school and college students, vociferously protesting the MTA’s planned elimination of student metrocards. TWU Local 100 got strong support from allies in the union movement and government, including New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes, PBA President Pat Lynch, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum, the UFT's Michael Mandel, DC 37’s Oliver Gray, Teamsters Local 237's Gregory Floyd, and Public Advocate Bill DiBlasio, to name a few. (Watch this page for videos, coming soon.)

President John Samuelsen trenchantly criticized MTA cuts as blatant disregard of workers and the needs of citizens. He called upon members to speak in a single voice: "Hell no, Mr. Walder. We will fight your attempts to steal our jobs; we will fight your attacks on our students; you will not destroy our transit system."

NYC M.T.A. Delays A and E Plans for Reality Show on Subway Workers
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/nyregion/02reality.html?scp=1&sq=tv show transit&st=cse

And, Cut! Money Woes Delay a TV Reality Show on Subway Workers
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: March 1, 2010

It is not your typical subway series.

Who knows what drama lurks beneath the city? Transit officials may let the A&E network find out, but not immediately.
For months, officials at theMetropolitan Transportation Authorityhave been working with television producers on a reality show set in and around the New York City subway. The series, commissioned by the A&E network, would follow an ensemble cast of train conductors, station agents and other subway workers as they handle track fires, angry customers and the grind of running the country’s biggest mass transit system.

But as with many of the authority’s major projects, the show is now facing a delay. Citing hard financial times, transit officials said they were halting work on the show, even though shooting had started last month for a 15-minute sample episode — the first step toward a pilot and potentially a full season.

“I still want to do it at some point,” said Christopher Boylan, the authority’s top marketing officer. “It may not make sense to do it right away.”

NYC Students, transit workers rally outside MTA-TWU 100 Working With Students To Fight Attack On Public Transit
http://www.workers.org/2010/us/mta_0211/

NEW YORK
Students, transit workers rally outside MTA

By Tony Murphy
New York
Published Feb 4, 2010 10:04 PM
A dynamic student movement has risen up against the bank-controlled Metropolitan Transit Authority’s provocative proposal to eliminate free student MetroCards. For the second time since this serious cut was announced, hundreds of high school students protested Feb. 1 outside the MTA’s headquarters, chanting “MTA, we won’t pay!”

A blatant attack has aroused a fightback in
NYC’s middle and high schools.
WW photo: Tony Murphy
The outrageous proposal has also prompted greater collaboration between students and Transit Workers Union Local 100, whose officers addressed the crowd and the media at the action. Along with student activists, speakers represented Sistas and Brothas United, Desis Rising Up and Moving, the Northwest Bronx Coalition, Make the Road New York, and Youth on the Move, as well as a handful of elected representatives.

The campaign to save student MetroCards is also a movement to defend public education — the MTA’s proposal is the New York equivalent of cancelling school buses. This campaign is growing alongside the one against Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to close 19 schools and the March 4 Day to Defend Education, whose multiple actions at college campuses around the city will culminate in a march that ends at MTA headquarters.

What Killed Roger Rebel? A Self-Inflicted Wound of NYC TWU 100 President

http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2009-12-18/Editor's_"Razzle_Dazzle"_Column/What_Killed_Roger_Rebel_A_SelfInflicted_Wound.html

What Killed Roger Rebel? A Self-Inflicted Wound

By RICHARD STEIER
In the 1974 movie “The Gambler,” the title character, Axel Freed, is asked by a bookmaker how he, a Harvard-educated college professor, could have gotten himself $44,000 in debt with his betting.

Axel, played by James Caan, replies, “I maneuvered.”

That is essentially how Roger Toussaint squandered a career as a labor leader that once glowed with promise and became so radioactive among his own members that his hand-picked successor was handily defeated by John Samuelsen Dec. 7 in the Transport Workers Union Local 100 election.

It didn’t matter that Mr. Toussaint and his cohorts did everything they could to stack the deck to protect their power, including a try at some chicanery on the morning of the actual vote-count. They managed to get so many of the union’s 37,000 members either declared ineligible to vote or too alienated to bother that only a shade over 10,000 took the trouble to mail in ballots. Nine years earlier, Mr. Toussaint by himself got 12,465 votes, justifying his claim that he had been given a mandate by his rank and file.

NYC TWU 100 Samuelsen’s Eye on Reuniting TWU 100
http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2009-12-18/News_of_the_week/Samuelsens_Eye_on_Reuniting_TWU.html

Samuelsen’s Eye on Reuniting TWU

Defeated Toussaint’s Choice in Bruising Battle
By ARI PAUL

TAKING BACK THE UNION: Flanked by supporters on election night, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President-elect John Samuelsen promised to end infighting in the union, dispel racial divisions and unify his rank and file against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. His Take Back Our Union slate has a two-vote majority on the executive board and won four of seven vice presidencies.
The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang
Just after 6 p.m. in the basement of the Park Central Hotel in midtown Dec. 7, the numbers were clear: the dissident Take Back Our Union slate of Transport Workers Union Local 100 had swept the four local-wide offices, with Track Inspector John Samuelsen taking the presidency over Curtis Tate, and the slate’s candidates captured four of the seven vice presidencies.

But election committee chair James Mitchell hesitated to announce the results for the official record. For the TBOU supporters gathered on the balcony overlooking the floor where election workers processed ballots, however, the celebration began with slaps on Mr. Samuelsen’s back and exclamations of “You won!”

A New Look at an Old Quarrel Over ‘Waterfront’
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/a-new-look-at-an-old-quarrel-over-waterfront/

January 6, 2010, 11:09 AM
A New Look at an Old Quarrel Over ‘Waterfront’
By JOSEPH BERGER

Columbia Pictures
Marlon Brando in a scene from “On the Waterfront,” Elia Kazan’s 1954 film with screenplay by Budd Schulberg, adapted from Mr. Schulberg’s novel. Questions remain about whether Mr. Kazan and Mr. Schulberg made the film to justify their naming names before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Some quarrels never seem to fade away, and the anti-Communist battles of the 1940s and 1950s are being fought long after most of the original antagonists are dead.

Not only do the arguments over Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs live on, but the question of whether Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg made the classic 1954 film “On the Waterfront” to justify their naming names of former Communist associates, seems to have found an especially robust and curious afterlife with the deaths in recent years of Mr. Kazan, the film’s director, Mr. Schulberg, its scriptwriter, and two actors, Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.

Now comes a new revelation — a footnote, really — that is sure to keep the pot boiling for a good long time. On Sunday night, James T. Fisher, the author of a new book about the film and the New York waterfront, told the crowd attending a reading at Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn, of an intriguing discovery he had made.

A big step for Teamster reform in NYC

http://socialistworker.org/2009/12/18/big-step-for-teamster-reform

A big step for Teamster reform
Former Teamsters Local 804 member Danny Katch looks at the significance of the reformers' victory in the union's recent election.
December 18, 2009

Tim Sylvester (left, facing camera), the newly elected president of Teamsters Local 804, with a group of UPS drivers (804 Members United Slate)

THE TEAMSTER reform movement took a step forward earlier this month when members of the New York City-based Local 804 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters voted for Tim Sylvester and the 804 Members United slate.

The new reform team, which defeated the incumbent leadership of Howard Redmond by a more than 2-to-1 margin, won the election by pledging to increase member involvement and take a more confrontational approach with the local's main employer, UPS. "The membership was ready for change," said Ken Reiman, a member of the new executive board and leader in Teamsters for a Democratic Union. "They told us this at every gate we hit."

The reformers' victory in New York has national significance. Local 804 is one of the largest locals of UPS workers, and the change in local leadership could increase pressure on IBT President James Hoffa to stand stronger against company demands for concessions.

Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
**************************************
NYC Transit Workers Take Back Union After Bitter Election
with
. John Samuelsen, President-Elect ,TWU Local 100
. Israel Rivera. Secretary Treasurer-Elect
. Benita Johnson, Recording Secretary-Elect
. Angel Giboyeaux, Administrative VP Elect

Subway Track Inspector John Samuelsen & the Take Back Our Union
slate won the hotly contested TWU Local 100 elections Dec. 7 after a
multi-year campaign of criticizing the administration of Roger Toussaint
& Acting Pres. Curtis Tate over issues of union democracy & militancy.
Their first priorities will be getting the MTA to honor an arbitration award
granting union members 11% raises under a 3-year contract & fighting
cutbacks due to the reduced revenue to the MTA.
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Brave New Films presents:
Where Was the Fed
with
Senator Bernie Sanders

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in charge of the central bank since 2006,
could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small
and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a