Taxi workers strike back

New York's Mayor takes up cudgels against the largely immigrant taxi workers of the city after they protest against his newly imposed set of rules that strike at their dignity.

VIJAY PRASHAD
in New York

SOMETIMES a struggle is victory enough. That seems to be the mood among the taxi workers and their supporters in New York City. After two taxi strikes, on May 13 and 21, the 24,000 taxi workers ride a buoyant tide despite the harsh response from City Hall and many sections of the media whose capitulation to the power elite is well known. After 98 per cent of the taxi workers supported the strike on May 13, Biju Mathew, an organiser for the New York Taxi Workers' Alliance (NYTWA, the principal representative of the taxi workers in the city) and a founding member of the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), declared that "we have the most successful strike in the city's history." While the media expressed its surprise at the victory of the demonstration, Mathew was clear that the NYTWA was not surprised at all: "We knew we had a big strike on our hands. We know how to communicate with the drivers." The drivers' immediate complaint was against 17 draconian rules promulgated by Mayor Rudolph Guiliani on April 27 which struck at the dignity of the drivers. Half of them hail from South Asia and the rest are mainly from Africa and the Caribbean. There was little concern among these taxi workers for the nuclear jingoism in the Indian subcontinent as they linked in solidarity to block racist rules.

At the start of the strike, Azad Hussain, an NYTWA member, announced that "the time has come to take on the city." New York is no easy city to live in and it is certainly not endowed with a government that responds to the needs of its working people. Boss Tweed in the late 19th century made an undemocratic style of governance normal in Tammany Hall.

A century later, Guiliani won the mayoralty, proceeded to reinvent Tammany Hall in the new City Hall building (Fiorello Hall), and used his power to conduct a policy of domestic structural adjustment. He has "down-sized" the municipal workforce, fought against tenant rights and organisations of the homeless, thrown recipients of social welfare cover to the wolves of destitution, cracked down on unions and given the police a free rein to act with viciousness.

RICHARD DREW/AP
At a taxi lot in New York as drivers went on strike on May 13. Taxis were hard to find at airports, outside hotels and on Manhattan streets that day.

The high incidence of police brutality (mainly against non-white residents as reported by Amnesty International in AMR 51/36/96) moved the previous Mayor, David Dinkins, to appoint the Mollen Commission. The commission recommended the creation of an independent monitor over the police, something Guiliani has refused to do. In "Guiliani Time", the agents of power feel emboldened to act with impunity against the residents.

Resistance against Guiliani's neo-liberal juggernaut has seemed futile. Only when acts of immense brutality occur (such as the mutilation of a Haitian, Abner Louima) do people feel emboldened to protest. Or else, the unions provide a holding operation against the worst excesses of City Hall. In this context, the taxi workers' strikes have been remarkable; the most significant in the city's labour history in the past three decades.

The fact that most of the taxi workers are immigrants has led the Mayor to belittle them as part of the general anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. "When there is a strike or a demonstration," he said on May 12, "it's largely for more wages. This is a strike and a demonstration for the purpose of being able to drive recklessly and have nothing done about it. This is a theatre of the absurd." Typically, Guiliani portrayed himself as a champion of the "concerned consumer" and the "responsible citizen" in opposition to the "irresponsible worker" and the "lawless immigrant". The taxi workers find his characterisation of them to be another example of the systematic denigration faced by them. "There has been a constant bashing of the taxi driver by the media and the politicians," said Bhairavi Desai of NYTWA, "to make the public feels that the taxi driver is a bad person who can be punished and punished."

Guiliani's 17 new rules (an increase in fines up to $1,000, for rude behaviour, smoking and speeding) are "not so muchpro-safety as anti-driver," said Javed Tariq."It is easy to be anti-driver because people do not consider us human."

These rules simply add to the burden of the drivers who ply the streets for 84 hours a week in 12 hour shifts, seven days a week. For each of these 12 hours, the driver leases the taxi from a garage owner who charges $100 as rent. This lease rate and the additional expense on petrol prevents the drivers from making more than a rudimentary wage. Since they are seen as "independent contractors", the drivers are not entitled to health benefits, vacation time or retirement benefits. They are kept in a vice by a triumvirate that enjoys the fruits of this $1.5-billion business: the garage owners, the brokers (who often provide the drivers with advances) and the Taxi and Limousine Commission (which regulates the industry for the city, and earns fabulous fees from sale to the garage owners of "medallions", or the right to operate a taxi). Assisting this trinity are the New York City police, notorious for their acts of harassment against the mainly immigrant drivers. Beatings and routine citations for trivial infringements of traffic rules appear to be the norm in the drivers' lives.

In 1992, Vivek Renjan Bald's documentary Taxivala/Autobiography revealed the extent of frustration and anger within the ranks of the drivers. As Bald made his film, the drivers organised themselves into the Lease Drivers' Coalition (LDC), notably owing to the efforts of the late Saleem Osman. The next year the drivers conducted a major demonstration against police brutality. Since then, the drivers have been involved in other skirmishes with the city authorities and this year 800 of them formed the NYTWA.

With a handful of volunteers, no stable financial source and no established office, the NYTWA decided to stop work on May 3 (after Guiliani published the rules in the city's rarely read legal journal). By May 4, flyers hit the streets. "We knew immediately we'd be successful," Mathew noted. "The outpouring was tremendous." Drivers took the flyer and made more copies with their own resources, sometimes adding their own notes and drawings to the posters. One driver was happy to declare that he handed out 4,000 flyers in the week preceding the strike.

The other means used by the NYTWA to advertise the action was the CB radio used by about 4,000 taxis and generally the main way drivers communicate with friends during their long shifts. Organisers stood at the locations where drivers changed shifts, handing out flyers and talking to the drivers. On May 13, esprit de corps amongst the strikers was high.

City Hall, meanwhile, continued to be vindictive. Guiliani joked that perhaps the city would be better served with one "taxi-free day". This humour, however, was hollow, since the residents felt the effects of the action. In his vindictive style, the Mayor vowed to destroy the taxi workers' initiative. He signed an executive order that allowed vans and livery cars to encroach on the taxi industry. This was in retaliation both for the strike and a demonstration that the taxi workers had planned for May 21. "I don't negotiate with people who want to close the city down... never have, never will," the Mayor said on May 14.

The judiciary refused to endorse Guiliani's executive order, a small victory for the NYTWA. The bigger victory was the 80 per cent support for the May 21 strike as well as the sensational march of 400 taxi workers across Queensboro bridge that day. This time the taxi owners worked against the drivers since many of them felt that a deal could be cut with City Hall. The NYTWA reaffirmed the need for the drivers to hold fast against the administration. "We cannot back down," said Desai, "the stronger we get, the harder they (the city authorities and the owners will fight."

Given the recalcitrance of the officialdom in the matter of acknowledging the grievances of the workers, one can be sure that the struggle will get harder and will remain alive for a long time.

The Reverend Calvin O. Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, announced on May 21 that "if the people who enjoy democratic liberties do not speak up and out, we could see ourselves moving towards a fascist state in New York." The taxi workers spoke up and that itself is a victory in the context of the city's politics.

Vijay Prashad is Assistant Professor, International Studies, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Home | The Hindu | Business Line | Sportstar