Letters from MTA Drivers

Anonymous thoughts of a driver

As an employee of MTA, I join with the struggle that Red Flag is making. Here, the problem is that many are already slaves of MTA and its low wages. Taking advantage of the economic situation and their prestigious name as a company, MTA hires workers paying them poverty wages.

They also spy and make rules to drown the same workers. The rules can supposedly be used by the workers to defend themselves, but they are a double-edged sword because they help the same MTA to get rid of workers.

On the other hand, the workers do not want to join because they have their families to maintain and they have to survive by lowering their heads in reproach and facing constant threats that they will be fired if they do not respect the rules.

These are sometimes absurd because those who make them are not in the street with the people who get on the buses. They see everything from their offices on the screen and it is easier to write rules about how to treat the people who live daily the aberrations of some people, the humiliation and abuse suffered by a bus operator earning a poverty wage, which is what they pay.

MTA tries by all means to tell the drivers that they should treat people as nicely as possible without mistreating them and without racism, and that they should protect these passengers. In this, they are correct, but the question is "Who protects the drivers from racism and mistreatment?" MTA does not do it. They don't care if we are mistreated psychologically, verbally, or physically.

They say they are guarding the safety of the passengers but what really interests them is that they not get sued:  that is, the money they would lose. All the drivers need MTA to defend and support us, something which MTA is very far from doing. They prefer to put us between a rock and a hard place, paying outrageously low wages.

In the street, we are humiliated and who guards our rights? NO ONE. Question: Is this freedom of speech and equality that they

preach so much in this country, where they say there is no racism and that we all have rights?

A right to what? To be mistreated, humiliated without anyone to defend us, for some miserable green pieces of paper that only serve to

corrupt the society. The millionaires appreciate this green paper called the dollar more than life.

It's too bad that our society has chosen to be so low and that we are miserable because of this paper and coins that, since they are not food, cannot be eaten. Our future is uncertain with this rotten money.

--An MTA driver

Subject: MTA contract

In the drivers' contract is an item that you should mention for all operators to know. It needs to be changed. Any operator hired after Sept. 7 1991 with 23 years who is under 55 would have no medical coverage if they retire. Even age 55-57 they would have to pay 50% which would be $500 out of pocket. Recently Vice General Chairman John Ellis retaliated against his Secretary of L.C.A for being against the contract and at the Sportsman Lodge contract meeting spoke out against it. He then stripped him of authority to represent the members of Division 8. We can't trust the committee, who also in their latest bulletin said a minority of members turned down the contract.

--A Driver

Whose schools?"

During a forum at the American Federation of Teachers convention in July, there was some sharp struggle.  Many teachers expressed their anger at school closings, standardized tests, and racist inequality in the schools, but they wanted to fight to "defend public education."

A comrade said, "It's not public education.  It's capitalist education, and we shouldn't defend it.  The schools in capitalism have never served the working class and they never will.  We should instead fight for a revolution for communism where schools and everything else will serve the working class."

Another comrade said, "These aren't our schools.  They never were.  We shouldn't be fighting to reform the schools.  We should be fighting to destroy the whole system and build one that meets the needs of workers everywhere."

Another speaker commented that you can't build a revolutionary movement by organizing people to fight for reforms.

A panelist responded to these statements by saying that if we used words like communism, we would turn off many teachers and others.  Ironically, this professor's talk had been so

packed with jargon that few in the audience could make sense of it.

Our experiences at the convention proved the panelist wrong.  Teachers and other public workers gladly took our communist newspaper and pamphlet.  Some donated money and will go to our website.  Many praised us for our ideas and actions.

We have renewed confidence that in this crisis of capitalism, masses of workers, soldiers, students and teachers will take communist ideas as their own.

—LA Comrades

Questions about raising communist internationalism

The article and letters about the Seattle summer project were an inspiring example of how young people advance by taking political struggle to the workers. The article also made a helpful point about the importance of study groups which prepare comrades for political practice and then meet again to analyze it. 

However, it isn't clear from the articles or the letter that the study groups actually dealt with what we mean by building communist solidarity. We don't call for trade-union solidarity where unions send money to other unions on strike, or organize consumer boycotts of products made by scabs. But I don't think we should call for Boeing workers  to "help" workers in South Africa, either. That's charity. I think communist solidarity means building the only movement through which we can ALL break the chains of wage slavery.  Did the study groups discuss these ideas before they went to Boeing or evaluate the discussions they had afterward?

 It would also have been helpful for the article to have explored what Red Flag readers inside the Boeing plants did with the letter. 

How many asked others to sign?  What reactions did they get?  How many did sign?    What conversations about communism happened?  Did the effort move anyone closer to joining the Party, or lead more workers to take papers?

Another article or letter should answer these questions. 

We used to follow a "parallel tracks" strategy: putting forward reforms while distributing communist literature.  Worse, we approached

workers around reforms and raised communism "later."  The encounter described, in spite of its exemplary boldness showing confidence in the masses, seemed to represent these old strategies instead of "mobilizing the masses for communism."

We are struggling to figure out how to mobilize for communism around particular issues like the South African metalworkers' strike. 

Seattle was the one place where comrades took advantage of this excellent opportunity.  We should try to learn more from it.

--A reader

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