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Transports

  • A Fight for the Future
    1 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by JOSHUA B. FREEMAN
    Editor’s Note: Bus and subway workers in New York City agreed to return to work and to the bargaining table Thursday as negotiators for the Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transit Authority worked on a final settlement after a two-day strike that immobilized the city. Joshua B. Freeman examines the history and issues at stake: the fight against the lie that abstract, neutral economic necessity, not the ideas and interests of the rich and powerful, are (…)

  • The Anti-Social Bastards in Our Midst : The Car Is Turning Us Into A Nation Of Libertarians
    27 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by George Monbiot
    The road rage lobby couldn’t have been more wrong. Organisations like the Association of British Drivers and "Safe Speed" - the boy racers’ club masquerading as a road safety campaign - have spent years claiming that speeding doesn’t cause accidents. Safe Speed, with the help of some of the most convoluted arguments I’ve ever read, even seeks to prove that speed cameras "make our roads more dangerous"(1). Other groups, such as Motorists Against Detection (officially known (…)

  • Both sides did what they had to
    25 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Juan Gonzalez
    For three days, their transit strike had paralyzed America’s greatest city, and now it was time to go back to work.
    The 33,700 members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 were exhausted. They had incurred the wrath of millions of transit riders, of Mayor Bloomberg, of Gov. Pataki, of the city’s entire business establishment, even of their own parent union in Washington. For violating the Taylor Law, the local and each individual striker still face huge fines.
    Still, (…)

  • It’s clear Bloomberg just didn’t get it
    25 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Errol Louis
    Mayor Bloomberg yesterday confirmed that he stood by every word of his televised outburst against the Transport Workers Union’s leadership at the height of this week’s strike. He called them "thuggish," "selfish," "frauds" and the like. A host of critics, such as state Sen. Kevin Parker of Brooklyn, now accuse the mayor of being racially divisive.
    "We only need to look back to the day and time when MTA workers first gained the kind of pension and benefits which are now (…)

  • New York City transit strike was quashed by the unions
    24 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    By Bill Van Auken
    A group of top union officials in New York City played the key role in bringing about the abrupt end of the New York City transit strike, brokering a deal that leaves 34,000 subway and bus workers exposed to punishing financial penalties and the continued drive by their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), to extract far-reaching concessions.
    This was the first shutdown of the nation’s largest mass transit system in 25 years. It expressed the (…)

  • MTA Strike: The Politics of No-Tomorrow
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Wayne Barrett
    Would this strike be happening if Governor George Pataki were running for re-election next year? Would Mike Bloomberg’s city be shut down if the expiration date on the Transport Workers Union’s contract were September or October, when he reached pre-election settlements with half a dozen city unions?
    If your answer is no to either question, then you believe, as anyone with a memory in New York knows, that politics is the only explanation for this maddening and (…)

  • New York Rising, and Going Back to Bed
    20 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    7 comments

    WOID #17 -
    Strike one for the working guy.
    If the Masters of the Universe (New York’s mayor, New York State, the bosses, Wall Street and the lumpenbobos thought this was going to be "1980 Transit Strike, II" they’ve been disappointed.
    Nineteen-eighty : good little New Yorkers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, Job über Alles, with the Mayor playing Right-to-Work Guiding the people, not much in the titty department, though.
    This time : nothing. Deserted streets. My post office closed. (…)

  • Censored document reveals increased transit facilities for the USA to use EU airports to move people
    18 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    EU-USA: Rendition and removing refugees raise the same issue: Censored document reveals increased transit facilities for the USA to use EU airports to move people around the world
    There has been an informal agreement between the EU and the USA that flights to and from the USA can stop-over in transit at EU airports since around 1998 (see EU docs no: 13554/97 and 6541/1/98). The USA requested these "facilities" into order to send people back to Africa, the Middle East and Asia. No figures (…)

  • Northwest and Delta executives to make millions from bankruptcies
    20 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    By Jerry Isaacs
    Over the last several years the top corporate executives at Northwest and Delta airlines negotiated retirement packages guaranteeing them millions in the event the companies declared bankruptcy and defaulted on their pension payments to employees. Both companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last Wednesday, in large measure to escape their pension obligations and seek the bankruptcy court’s backing for sweeping cuts in airline workers’ jobs, wages and benefits. (…)