December 15th contract rally

With our contract end 30 days away, TWU Local 100 organized a contract rally outside of MTA headquarters at 2 Broadway, the site of MTA Labor Relations and Managerial offices. The call was put out far and wide to ‘Stand as One’ and ‘fight’ for your contract. Good ideas, but was it the knockout success it needed to be? Was it the kick-start moment our contract fight needs?                 

The answer plainly is no it was not.

First off, the attendance was sparse. From our view about 750 to 1000 members showed up. Which leads to a few questions:

• Are members taking this contract seriously?
• Is TWU Local 100 at fault for not getting the word out?
• Who picked a Thursday for a rally?

Members are either apathetic, uninspired, apprehensive or resigned to the fact that our next contract will be a bad one. How else could anyone explain a modest crowd at a contract showdown meeting? The ‘push’ inside the Union Hall began this past Monday Dec. 12^th. Way too little time to build a mass rally, but some members did get the word. The question must be then: Why didn’t they show up? Some divisions like MOW and TA maintenance were there in large numbers, others like MTA Bus were not. Even some Vice Presidents did not show up: John Day (MTA Bus), Brian Clarke (Mabstoa) must have had pressing prior commitments. Earl Phillips subbed for VP Clarke and a surprisingly animated and vocal Angel Giboyeaux made sure no one missed VP Day.                

The physical area outside 2 Broadway was deceiving as well, members were directed to a narrow lane in the street, at most 10 members could stand across the length of it. A cynical observer would remark that the last two Union events were held in small spaces, (Roseland Ballroom, outside 2 Broadway) to make small crowds look bigger. After all, perception is everything in many ways.

The usual music blared (we hate to nitpick, but who selects the music at these events? It is always the same tired songs over and over) then the speakers came and then some more speakers and even more speakers. Each department had a VP or other representative to speak for it. Then came the politicians, then came the Officials from other Unions, then went home about a quarter of the crowd.

Scheduled was a march to Zuccotti Park to join up with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. But by the time the many speakers wore the crowd down, repeating the same damn thing over and over, only about half those members who came to the rally actually arrived at Zuccotti Park.              

What did they find at Zuccotti Park? About half-a dozen Occupy Wall Street OWS protesters. A slew of Police Officers (we hope making over time OT). The highlight of the night was the ‘mike check’ speech by Amy of OWS. As we found out that night, a ‘mike check’ is when a group is not allowed to have amplified devices, whatever the speaker says is repeated by others in the audience so everyone can hear the content of the original speech. Cute, effective and good reason for people to keep their speeches as short as possible. Too bad the rally outside 2 Broadway did not have a ‘mike check’.

It is fairly easy to anticipate what the other TWU related blogs and websites will say about this rally - ‘The membership is not in support of this administration’, ‘look how few people showed up to the contract rally.’. But that is their usual simplistic, myopic view. Here at why did you join the Union we tend to see the larger issue rather than the politically expedient slant.

The question though remains - does this relatively low turnout at this contract event signal a lack of support for the John Samuelsen administration? If one calculates that 35% to 40% of the membership are not in good standing (eligible to vote for the contract), calculate that 3000 members or so of TWU are not even covered by this contract, the MABSTOA turnout was low for one reason or another. You could also factor in that at least one third of our members are working at any given time and the fact that Thursday is not a good day for a rally. The answer to the question of is the rally’s turnout a sign of little politically, would be that the pool of potential attendees were relatively small.            

In fact, the declared opposition of John Samueslen was on the other side of Broadway across the street from the main rally site and they had less than 10 people with them. So what should that tell you?       

What this rally does tell you is that TWU Local 100 organizing better start living up to its name. On an Organizing level it was bungled. The building of such an event has to have more than a 2 day window. The rally also should not have been so close to the Mass Membership Meeting. Space between meetings is important. If the Date was significant, remember DEC 15^th 2005 TWU went on strike and shut the entire city down for 3 days, then the MMM should have been earlier, maybe in November. TWU Special Events and Organizing has had a bad few months. Whether it is getting a larger crowd out to rallies or running out of food on event days or providing proper spacing between events, the ball has been dropped and now must be put back into play.