The ATU Gets It Wrong- Lessons from the BART Strike

The following is from a longer article about the BART strike by Bertha Hernandez and Frederico Fernandez titled "How NOT to lead a strike: The Story of the BART Unions, 2013.

Two people lost their lives on Saturday, October 19, 2013, owing to the criminal negligence of the BART Administration and its Board of Directors. One of the people killed — crushed to death by a wayward train car — was a BART worker. The other, killed by the same car, was a contractor who crossed the picket line to perform an inspection of the tracks. Within less than 48 hours of the incident, the BART administrators produced what they had stubbornly refused to offer for the past seven months: a tentative agreement contract for BART workers.

The end of the 2013 BART conflict does not mark the end of the struggle. We believe that the result of this ongoing fight will affect us all. For these reasons, we stand to benefit from carefully examining this strike and drawing some conclusions that will prepare us for future battles.

The Board of Directors’ strategy, as far as we can see, amounted to this: use Hock to undermine the unions, and impose a qualitative change in the balance of power between management and the workers. Hock’s modus operandi is already familiar in the transportation industry. It is a comprehensive offensive starting with imposing his own rules on the negotiations (including banning union communication with the media), while finding a convenient way to circumvent these rules himself. Then, he conducts “surface negotiations” — that is, negotiations without the intention of reaching an agreement. These lukewarm overtures make it easy to accuse union counterparts of intolerance and greed. The final stroke is a public campaign of systematic media smears, accusing workers of stubborn unreason and selling out the riders.

Negotiations for a new BART contract began in April on a sour note, when BART management hired Tom Hock as lead negotiator. A prominent business executive from Veolia corporation, a transnational company notorious for (among other dubious activities) privatizing public transportation in cities around the world, Hock had earned a reputation for effectiveness in attacking and undermining unions. As lead negotiator, he would serve BART administrators Grace Crunican (General Manager) and the BART Board of Directors.

The main goal of the managers was not just to settle on a contract that was bad for the unions, but also to politically undermine the unions in case they decide to strike, forcing them to take this already serious risk under the most hostile conditions possible. The BART administration portrays itself as advocating for the public interest, while the unions (they lament with a sad shake of the head) are privilege-hoarding, tax-vacuuming, hysterically selfish special interest groups.

The only way the unions could have countered this political offensive would have been to come out in public with a vigorous, sustained and systematic campaign for workers’ rights against austerity. They could have presented these rights to the public as the legitimate aspirations of all workers as a class. What a wasted opportunity. Instead, the union bureaucracy showed a distinct disinterest in advancing a public debate in terms of the struggle of one class against another class. Nowhere did they outline a broader agenda of promoting more unionizing of private sector workers in order to access better pay and other hard-won gains.

Conceding and exacerbating the fragmentation of the class is consistent with most labor leaders’ orientation to keep their own struggle separate and isolated from other struggles. During the BART fight, we saw this in the failure to link with Amalgamated Transit Union 192 (Bay Area buses), who were also involved in contract negotiations and preparing for strike action in the public transport sector.

For our purposes, we’ll focus primarily on ATU 1555, because it is the union that had the greatest potential to lead a strong fight, and thus represents the gravest disappointment.

Antoinette Bryant, president of ATU 1555, is the head of a union leadership characterized by fragmentation, inconsistency and instability. The leadership of this union tends to be replaced after a few years; the current leadership of the union took over just three years ago as part of the rejection by the membership to the concessionary contract of 2009. The new president did not arrive with a leadership team capable of advancing democracy within the union, through the preparation and development of member-driven systems capable of resisting the attack by BART administrators. As we mentioned, ATU 1555 also showed a notable and discouraging disinterest in organizing solidarity and unity with other struggles.

For the present negotiations Antoinette Bryant wrote a little-disseminated opinion piece published by the San Francisco Chronicle on June 18, two weeks before the strike. The scarcely shared article contained the main talking points on the negotiations with the BART administration. Bryant denounced the heavy handed maneuvers of the BART administrators: labeling them bad-faith politicians who “instinctively play games rather than compromise,” and asking them to “put away the political agenda and address the urgent needs of this great transit system.” Despite this tough talk, Bryant never managed to best her adversaries. Throughout the whole process of negotiations, she led every failed effort to compromise, and proved all too willing to give concessions.

In addition to misjudging the power of their opponents, Bryant and the leadership of ATU 1555 also stayed curiously out of touch with their own base. The workers from ATU 1555, speaking in social and economic terms, are, as we mentioned, a relatively privileged layer of workers as compared with the prevailing wages in the Bay Area. Everybody talks about this, except of course, the leadership of the union itself. Burying their heads in the sand, they tried to avoid dealing with the implications and political challenges this represents. The multiple contradictions of their position are reflected in the fragmentation of the union leadership itself: fragmentation evident throughout the conflict, during public rallies and during the strike.

Besides the milieu around the ATU 1555 union president, there are two other distinct sectors in the union leadership: one represented by Chris Finn, Recording Secretary, and the other by Yuri Hollie, station agent representative. Both are members of the bargaining committee and the Executive Committee. Finn appeared as a union leader attempting to build connections with community organizations and other workers, and doing joint work with other BART unions in the organizing of public rallies. But the orientation to hold public rallies was short-lived: not everyone in the union leadership was on the same page. Antoinette Bryant played only a very minor role during the first public rally in August. She then short-circuited a second rally planned for October (around the re-ramping up of strike forces), only to see it half-revived via a joint effort by Finn and Hollie, who were left trying to hot-house a community-oriented strike campaign that should have been grown and nurtured over months. Such inconsistencies in public orientation thus revealed the constant and intense competition among union leaders.

For their part, both Finn and Hollie led efforts to reach out to various groups in the Left: community based organization and activists groups. But these efforts were uncoordinated and inconsistent. As a result, none of them created a real democratic structure to elicit sustained solidarity from the community, or to steadily organize the union membership to play a role in these outreach efforts. The union militancy of ATU 1555 practically dissipated after the August 1st rally as the whole leadership shifted their focus away from organizing and toward negotiations. A few short months later, ATU 1555 membership participation in the October 8th rally was a dispiriting husk of its summertime bloom.

Chris Finn, a former member of the Left Party, began his union activity as part of a left-wing caucus in ATU 1555. But you’d hardly know it, looking at the way he conducted himself in a leadership position. In the 2013 contract negotiation and strike there was little differentiation, politically, between him and union president Antoinette Bryant. Both favored the approval of the tentative agreement of Oct. 21, and neither of them (or the other union leaders) blasted Gavin Newsom when he said that a BART strike should not happen again.

Yuri Hollie, the other EC member, has been an outspoken opponent against any type of concessions in the new contract, but was ineffective in putting together actual resistance to these concessions. When the conflict escalated, she was removed from the negotiations committee by the union president. She found herself isolated and incapable of mounting her own defense because of the inconsistency of her tactics. Had she built a more solid base of workers ready and willing to strike, things might have been different.

The upcoming elections of the officers of ATU 1555 scheduled for late November have been in the background of these competing positions and differences in the leadership. The union election process started with the nomination of candidates at the regular membership meeting in November, and the election takes place in December. Sadly, this fact seemed to represent a bigger priority, in the minds of the various leaders, than the strike itself.

(UPDATE: After two rounds of voting as of January 8, 2014, ATU 1555 has not been able to elect a union President, and a third, tie-breaking vote is taking place by mail. Current President Bryant and Finn were tied at 307 votes each in the second round of the election.)

As for the other unions, SEIU 1021 represents the largest fraction of BART workers; its current leadership has been at the helm for many years and has been the veteran chief negotiators of the BART contracts. The union local represents a total of 52,000 workers in Northern California. Roxanne Sanchez, the union president, has been directly involved in the contract negotiations and played a leading role along with Josie Mooney and John Arantes (BART Chapter president) for the past 15 years. They are also a dominant force in the regional Labor Councils that they effectively immobilized during the BART confrontation.

Even the smallest of the three BART unions and historically the most conservative, AFSCME 3993, summarily deposed President Jean Hamilton Gómez when he called union members to cross the picket line of the other two unions. Now-president Patricia Schuchardt led the union to join the July BART strike and called on the members to respect the picket line of the other two unions. She also played a leading role in denouncing BART management efforts to certify train controllers in order to break the strike, and wrote warning letters to the Public Utilities Commission on this issue. Despite certain promising instincts in leadership, however, its small size and the composition of its members (mostly supervisors) limited this union’s ability to perform any kind of leadership role during the conflict.

Meanwhile, the conservative leadership of ATU 1555 has no excuse. Even after a near-unanimous vote of the two main unions, vowing to strike if necessary, ATU 1555 repeatedly blocked any attempt to create a strike fund: thus making a strike unsustainable. With this kind of myopic, unrealistic approach, the short strike is just a flashy accessory to the contract negotiations behind closed doors.

As noted at the beginning of this tale, the dramatic end of the BART strike came swiftly after the second day, when a train ran over and killed a worker and a BART contractor. Both of them were breaking the strike while doing an inspection of the tracks (a task that would normally be done by other workers).

This is the first time in the history of BART where workers have been killed in the middle of a strike. The incident itself was not a freak accident, but a predictable consequence of managerial recklessness.

In a terrible irony, this was one of the main issues the unions were demanding to address in the negotiation of the new contract. Because of these incidents, BART had already been the subject of multiple citations for safety violations by OSHA, a state regulator. BART management refused to modify the safety protocols and instead filed multiple appeals to avoid compliance. There is a predictable profit-chasing incentive at play here: BART management wants to maintain computer control over as many of its operations as possible, in order to reduce costs and maximize efficiency. Thus, they continued to patch up the flawed safety protocols instead of completely revamping operations in order to avoid more deaths. (BART is finally doing this and the “simple approval” safety protocol has been cancelled permanently after these last two deaths).

In response to the deaths of the two workers, union bureaucrats decided to call for a low-key vigil the following day, suspending all planned actions on the picket lines. This, we feel, was a big mistake. Failing to call for a mass protest against the criminal negligence of BART management was a cowardly decision masquerading as “respect” for the slain workers and their families. The union bureaucrats clearly sensed that they suddenly had an advantage, a newly strengthened position at the negotiations table, and presumably they did not want to waste it on political denunciations or calls for criminal investigation.

The California Department of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is considering bringing criminal charges, a demand raised only by AFCSME so far — not by SEIU or ATU.

The tentative agreement was submitted to a vote of SEIU 1021 and ATU 1555 and was approved by an overwhelming margin by members of both unions (88 percent of SEIU, and 85 percent of ATU). The Board of Directors naturally approved it as well. (Though Zachary Mellett, one of the most anti-labor Board Directors, vowed to oppose the new contract on the grounds that it gives too much to the workers.)

The new contract contains concessions by workers in the area of benefits and pensions, compensated by an increase in wages — but without adjusting for the rate of inflation. The contract also makes concessions in terms of labor flexibility, an old demand of the administration.

In short, it is a net loss for workers.

Antoinette Bryant, ATU 1555 union president, declared the strike a victory in an unrelated public rally. (Unsurprising, perhaps, given that leadership often claims wins in order to keep their privileged positions as union officials, but bizarre and abhorrent nevertheless.)

In our view, the contract was not a victory. It would be more accurately called an economic net loss, and politically close to a tie (in which management “scored a goal” on themselves, with their deadly and criminal oversight). More importantly it is a result that will surely have negative impacts in future labor battles in the Bay Area. For us, what matters the most is not the economic particulars, but the overall political results of the strike.

The union leadership claiming a victory is an insult to the intelligence of the workers, and sows a seed for a disastrous defeat in the future. (With successes like these, who needs losses?) It does not do anything to help workers realize how close they came to political disaster themselves. It does not explain the spectacular letdowns they suffered through their reliance on the good favors of politicians from the Democratic Party political machine.

A strike is a battle. It represents one of the highest points in the class struggle. It is the moment in which the disparity of interests between workers and employers is expressed openly and directly as a confrontation between the economic interests of workers who seek better wages and working conditions, and employers who attempt to increase profits and protect their interests as capitalists. In the case of BART workers, as public employees, the employer is the capitalist state, which is controlled by the political parties of the capitalists.

Zooming out a bit: the main reasons why public sector workers are under attack relate to shrinking state budgets, due not only to an unprecedented concentration of wealth in a small population (wealth stolen by bankers, for instance, in the foreclosure crisis), but also reflecting a long-term economic decline of the United States. Historically, the public sector grew massively in the United States over the past 50 years under more favorable economic conditions. It created a privileged layer of workers, with better wages, medical benefits and pensions as well as better working conditions and work stability. That era is coming to an end — and that is what the strike by BART workers reflects.

To fight smarter in the future, we must learn from the errors of this battle. We see how secret bargaining negotiations kept workers in the dark and dampened their organization and mobilization for a militant strike. We see how the bureaucrats used the threat of a strike as a bargaining chip, yet suppressed dissent and independent actions by the rank and file. We are weary of these same old betrayals. There is a need to break with the parties of the bosses and tirelessly cultivate the strength of the workers. Otherwise, militant strikes will go completely extinct, and concessionary contracts will overgrow every sector.

Amalgamated Transit Union Opts for Class Compromise and Accommodation in Bay Area

Transportation workers in the Bay Area don't have a lot to be grateful for this holiday season, coming off a stormy period of negotiations last year which saw their unions, ATU Local 1555 and ATU Local 192, get together with management and force concessions on their members.

Subway workers, represented by Local 1555, went on a 4 day strike back in July which was called off by union leaders in exchange for closed door negotiations with union busting negotiator Thomas Hook, hired by BART management to shut down union demands for wage increases and improvements in working conditions. It was no surprise that no progress was made in working out an agreement, and just as it appeared that the strike was back on State Governor Jerry Brown intervened and imposed a 60 day cooling off period.

During the first 4 day strike union leadership at Local 192 representing Bay Area bus drivers took no solidarity action to support the striking subway workers and went along with AC Transit management plans to run extra buses to help BART move people during the strike.

AC Transit workers were also in a strike position and could have gone out on strike with the subway workers, but this type of solidarity action was to be  actively discouraged by the union leadership of both Locals 192 and 1555.

Eventually, a deal was reached by Local 1555 and BART management that awarded workers a 11.7% net raise over the 4 years of the contract. This was a slight improvement over management's initial offer of 8%. But even this modest gain failed to make up the ground lost going back to the 2009 contract negotiations where BART unions accepted $100 million in concessions at the height of the recession. And while an 11.7% wage increase seems like a good deal you have to remember that this is the Bay Area where the cost of living is estimated to have risen by 18.9% over the past 3 years for a family of four according to a recent report.

With the complicity of the union leadership BART management and the management of AC Transit were able to successfully isolate and immunize themselves against the possible threat of a common strike by both subway workers and bus drivers.

AC Transit workers were in turn subjected to a State imposed 60 day cooling off period and never got to walk a picket line. The union leadership of Local 192 brought a tentative agreement to its membership on two separate occasions recommending that their membership accept them only to have both deals voted down.

The first contract offer provided a 9.5 percent pay increase over three years, but it also required workers to begin paying a share of their medical insurance premiums, $70 a month in the first year, $140 a month in the second, and $180 in the third. This offer was voted down with 576 against the deal (70%) and 257 supporting it. AC Transit workers also voted down a second offer 561 to 369 latter in October which provided for lower health care contributions and raises of 3 percent in the first two years and 3.5 percent in the third year of a 3 year contract.

In late December a deal was reached and AC Transit workers voted in favour of a 9.5-percent wage increase over the next 3 years with workers making a flat monthly contribution of $120 per employee for health care. But the vote was a close one with 567 union members voting in favor of ratification and 465 against.

With the potential of a transit workers' strike averted in the economic hot zone of the Bay Area, the ATU has firmly abandoned any pretense of moving in the direction of building a class struggle organization capable of launching an offensive against the assault by municipal and state governments against unionized workers. Marching in step with management ATU leadership, at both the local and international levels, has become a shell of what a union is supposed to be, and has completely distanced itself from the implementation of the basic strategy of solidarity - an injury to one is an injury to all.

BART Strike Back On Workers Isolated by Own Unions

The strike is on again in San Francisco after a long tango between BART management, their lead anti-union negotiator, Thomas Hook, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and SIEU Local 1021. The fist strike back in July was called off by the unions and further delayed by the intervention of State Governor Jerry Brown who sought and obtained a court ordered 60 day cooling off period. That cooling off period has expired and with the unions and BART management making little progress the strike is back on again.

According to one report "The strike is an expression of deep opposition among transit workers to the demands of BART management, which is backed by the political establishment and media in the Bay Area and California. These demands include significant cuts in health care and pension benefits, along with changes in job rules designed to significantly reduce pay and increase management power."

The unions involved in the negotiations have conceded to most of management's demands but they know that such concessions remain deeply resented by their local membership who are unlikely to vote in favour of a sell out deal at their expense.

The sister local to ATU 1555, ATU local 192, representing bus drivers employed by AC Transit issued a strike notice after its members twice voted down sell out deals recommended to them by their leadership. During the first strike AC Transit was an essential tool in BART management's strategy of blunting the impact of the strike by running buses across the Bay area. While there was expressions of solidarity between BART workers and AC Transit drivers prior to the first strike, the ATU leadership deliberately sabotaged the tactic of a united union front in the face of management intransigence during the negotaitons by both BART and AC Transit officials.

A worker interviewed   at a rally in support of the strike "noted that, just as with the first BART strike in July, the transit workers were not receiving any strike pay. Workers will receive a meager $25 a week in strike pay only if it lasts more than two or three weeks, he said." For many workers this second strike appears to be a continuation of the first one, which was shut down by the unions with the promise that management would bargain fairly. “This is pretty much a continuation of the first strike,” said one worker. “They never really negotiated so I think of this as the sixth day of our strike.”

Workers are aware and deeply suspicious of the role their unions have been taking in the strike, knowing full well that Governor Brown would seek the court imposed injunction, and instead of devising a common strike strategy between BART workers and AC Transit drivers, deliberately keeping them apart so that AC Transit drivers would be forced to work as scabs in the event of a strike by BART subway workers.

Only one day after the strike began two BART maintenance workers who were checking a section of track were struck and killed by a San Francisco Bay area commuter train. Because of the ongoing transit strike a non-union employee was operating the train. According to  the police deputy chief for Bay Area Rapid Transit the driver in the accident was “qualified.” Apparently at the time of the accident, the train was "being run in automatic mode under computer control."

BART Assistant General Manager, Paul Oversier,  told reporters that one of the two workers, whose names were not released, was with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Oversier said. The union is not on strike but had asked members to show up on picket lines to support other workers. The employee "chose to come to work," Oversier said.

In its twitter feed ATU Local 1555 said it would suspend picketing for one day due to the recent tragedy and out of respect for the families involved. On Saturday night, picketers held candlelight vigils for the two workers killed. The Local 1555 twitter post stated "Our hearts go out to any @SFBART comrades involved in today's incident. In the midst of this #BARTstrike, NO ONE deserves to die."

ATU 57th Convention Proposes Service Councils

The 57th Convention promises to change the way negotiations are done by increasing the use of "service councils" that the ATU constitution already provides for. The idea is to create service councils consisting of several locals with a common employer. The service council would discuss issues, respond to problems and centralize arbitrations. They would also negotiate a single contract for all members working for a common employer. The councils would be made up of the of the president and financial secretary of the local included in a particular council. Are you suspicious of how these service councils are going to work? Take a look at how this kind of centralization played itself out in the SEIU. Is this how the International is going to take "our" voice away? Is the real purpose here to stop members from having a say in their local. And is this just a vehicle to allow the International to keep the dues money flowing in while negotiating concessionary contracts with employers?

Back in 2009, Stan Lyles was a rank-and-file California hospital worker who attacked SEIU for being undemocratic, cutting backroom deals with Bosses, and selling out the union’s members. Listen to what he has to say about the actions of the International and how the membership of his local dealt with the situation.

Watch Video

Local 192 Rank and File Speak Out Vote "NO" to AC Transit

Facts For Working People reports that AC Transit workers, members of Amalgamated Transit Union 192, rejected a contract yesterday by a vote of 576 to 257. The local's executive board had recommended the contract by a 8 to 5 majority. This is an extremely important result in that BART workers are also still in contract talks although the state has stepped in and imposed a 60"cooling off" period preventing a strike. The train operators at BART are members of ATU 1555, the bus driver's sister local.

The no vote reflects the strong opposition to a concessionary contract and an organized campaign for rejection among the ranks of local 192. A solidarity committee composed of workers from other unions and the community also provided support and solidarity to local 192 members.

This is an opportunity for labor to go on the offensive and to do that we must raise our expectations.

By this I mean reject the propaganda from the bosses and their media (and echoed by the union officialdom) that concessions have to be made and that there is no money in society. The last 40 years have shown that this concessionary bargaining has no end to it---damage control doesn't work. The more we give, the more they want. Transit unions should demand that public sector pensions and benefits that are being blamed for the crisis of capitalism should be expanded to all workers. Sociey has the money, it's simply a matter of what we do with it.

Any time the rank and file of a union rejects the leadership's recommendation in instances like this, it is no small matter. This vote will send shock waves in to the boardrooms of the corporate and investment community we can be certain of that.

In the aftermath of this vote, the bosses will be working with the union hierarchy behind the scenes to get something passed and put an end to this. The membership must be brought to their senses as defined by the 1% and their representatives. Any sign of unity in action between the various unions will be met with counters by the employers. Attempts to divide the workers, blue collar against white, bus drivers against train operators, must be fought. One local will be offered the carrot in order to break intra-union unity. This will be done through the leadership and the ranks that have spoken through this vote must ensure this is not successful. The involvement of the community will also increase these divisive tactics from management as well and the best way to combat this is through active committees of rank and file workers and the community.

Congratulations to ATU members who have taken a stand and have no doubt given a great boost to our brothers and sisters at BART. But the war will heat up now. The dirty tricks, lies and propaganda will intensify in subtle and not so subtle ways. The union officialdom at the international level and throughout the AFL-CIO will be working behind the scenes with their allies in the Democratic Party to derail what could develop in to a movement that would undermine their view of the world, and that threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses based on labor peace. Any union official that breaks from this approach would be a positive but the best security is the conscious intervention of the rank and file.

The following video presents the voice of rank and file members of Local 192 on the negotiations and the representation they are getting from their union officers in the ATU; Don't Piss On Me and Tell Me It's Raining

ATU Backs Down Agrees to Sell Out Contract

This report is from the World Socialist Web Site

Late Tuesday night, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) called off the strike scheduled for Wednesday morning and announced that it had agreed to a new contract with AC Transit (ACT) the public bus system for the East Bay in Northern California.

The ATU represents bus drivers, dispatchers, maintenance workers, and clerical staff at AC Transit, which has a daily ridership of approximately 180,000. AC Transit workers have been without a contract since the beginning of July. At stake in the negotiations were workers’ demands for higher wages and ACT’s demand for concessions on health care contributions. According to one driver, the transit workers have not had an effective raise in 15 years.

The final deal agreed to by the union leaders and management includes a 9.5 percent raise over three years and employee contributions to health care that rise to $180 a month in the third year. For a worker who makes the average income of $55,000 this would mean a net loss over the life of the contract. The average three year inflation rate in the US has stayed above eight percent for the past several years and the increased health care contribution amounts to a 3.5 percent wage cut for the average worker.

AC Transit workers have clearly shown their willingness to fight for a better deal, but they have been held back by their union. Before the contract expired, ATU members voted 97.4 percent in favor of a strike. The contract expired on July 1, the same day that BART workers, also represented by the ATU, saw their contracts expire.

In the face of widespread support for a common struggle by BART and ACT workers, the ATU leadership refused to let the two groups go on strike at the same time. The ATU demonstrated what they considered “solidarity” by agreeing to increase bus service during the BART strike, essentially pushing their members to act as strikebreakers.

During the strike AC Transit workers repeatedly complained that their union was not giving them information on contract negotiations and that they were not being respected at union meetings. To stem growing discontent among their members the union announced last Monday that it intended to strike Wednesday morning. Rather than actually follow through with the strike, the union leadership accepted an offer that was substantially the same as the management had proposed before the strike notification.

The last thing the ATU leadership wanted was any kind of combined strike which would have immediately brought the unions into conflict with public officials in the Democratic Party. California state governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has fiercely slashed budgets and championed public pension “reform,” which amounts to an end to defined benefit plans and an across-the-board assault on benefits. Brown and the Democratic Party enjoy the full-throated support of the unions, which function to block any opposition developing among workers to these policies.

The fact that the ATU leadership felt the need to announce a strike they had no intention of conducting points to a growing militancy of their membership. During the BART strike workers were often heard saying that if AC Transit and BART struck together, “that would be a shot heard round the world,” and “management would fold in a day.”

The 1968 Chicago Transit Strike

This may be the only video in existence about the Chicago Transit Authority (wildcat) strike of 1968. There is no wonder that official Chicago history has somehow buried this story in a deep crypt, but this video brings it back into the daylight, along with rare archival stills and film footage, and exclusive interviews with now retired CTA drivers who played key roles. Here is the 60s Civil Rights movement intersecting with the class struggle in a big North American city, engaging a major public sector employer. Adding to this mix was the fact that many of the drivers were returned Viet Nam veterans with combat experience and not inclined to back down from a fight. Now back in Chicago, the drivers confronted racism not only in the bus company but in the company union (warning: coarse language in video). "You could stand up in that union hall -- McNamara was the President -- at Van Buren and Ashland. Before you opened your mouth - whack! - you're out of order," recalls Rodgers Harmon, ret. 36 years CTA bus driver. "We didn't have any real representation in the union...the strike was not so much against the CTA, it was against the union with no representation," recalls Claude Brown, ret. CTA Bus Driver.

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