Layoffs and fare hikes hit US public transport
Poor commuters using the public transport system and workers delivering transit services, including light rail and bus drivers are facing hard times in the United States. But they are also beginning to organise and fight to ameliorate their conditions and the salvage the sector. This is in the wake of the sharp rise of fuel in 2008 and the simultaneous Great Recession.
The attendant difficulties of livelihood to the economic crisis and rising fuel prices have made the need for an efficient and affordable public transport system a palpable one for millions of Americans. The response of the American State and private transit agencies has however been to drastically reduce funding for the sector, laying off workers and cutting down on supply and services rendered, due to the low or near absence of any significant profit accruing for them. This is a classic case of putting capitalist greed over and above the needs of the teeming mass of the country’s population.
Over 80% of the transit agencies in the US are cutting their services and/or hiking the fares for most routes. In New York City, which has the largest transit system in the country, 2 subway routes and 34 bus lines have been phased out, while night owl services have been cut. Free fares for students, as well, are facing attacks. In San Francisco, the transit passes for the elderly, physically challenged and youth, which used to cost $5 per month, now goes for upwards of $20.
The present state of the transit system which has been laid bare, by the broader economic crisis which makes more people dependent on it due to declining employment levels and restructuring of priorities of domestic budgets, while at the same time, it is being attacked instead of funding for it being increased, has deeper roots. The soil of these roots is the priority given to the profit motive in the development of infrastructure within a neoliberal paradigm of development. The distribution of appropriated federal funding for transportation is a major root that reflects this suffocating soil. 82% of the funds generated from transport taxes are ploughed into the building and maintenance of highways and other roads, with just 18% left for the public transit system. This is not all. The statutory provisions for the use of public funding for mass transit stipulate that just 10% of such can be expended on the system’s actual operations. The bulk of 90% has to be expended on capital projects such as the expansion of light rail lines and the purchase of heavy equipment. This of course is an avenue for lucrative contracts for private contractors that build or supply these. And interestingly, as in the present situation, the expansion of light rail lines amount to nothing, when mass transit is most needed by working people impoverished by the economic crisis; rather than increase subway services for example, they are being cut since they are not so profitable!
The concentration of resources on the construction and maintenance of highways is not without cause. An efficient and cost-effective mass transit system poses a huge threat to the automobile and oil and gas industries, with their huge and massively influential conglomerates.
A well funded and promoted mass transit system, while not as profitable for the expansion of capital as the increase of markets for single-user gas guzzling automobiles, would also be a huge step forward towards reducing carbon emission. The neoliberal paradigm which has guided the US transport policy is, however, no more concerned in truth than in deed about environmental sustainability than it is about the livelihood of transport workers or the fate of millions of mass transit users.
Transport workers’ unions in the United States are not taking the present attacks on the public transit system kneeling down. As transit agencies in San Francisco contemplate cuts in the wages of workers in the sector and in New York, management gets set to sack at least 1,700 workers, and with similar situations being replicated across the US, public transit workers are rousing in response. In New York and Atlanta, Portland and San Francisco, Washington DC and several other cities, public transit workers unions such as the Transportation Workers Union, Amalgamated Transit Union and United Transportation Union, are beginning to seize the bull by the horns, fighting to save the jobs and wages of their members and in defence of the public transport system. They are calling for increased funding, affordable fares and the expansion, rather than the constriction of services. They are also forging ties with riders and linking their demands with broader political-economic issues, making concrete propositions on the way forward to revamp the public transit system.
Some of their propositions include: reducing the numbers of persons in management cadres, being the ones who take such huge chunks of emoluments; utilizing public funds which are presently being used to prosecute wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for the bailouts of banks and other corporations such as General Motors, to shore up the public transit system &; instituting a progressive taxation system that would ensure that the rich who can better afford it, be made to pay for the collective good that an efficient and cost-effective public transport system is.
The battle ahead for the unions would be tough, but they seem ready for the long haul, fighting this just battle until the neoliberal rot in the United States public transport system is turned around. They have made their message clear at public hearings on mass transit in several states and they have also organized protest actions with the active support and participation of riders. Building such bridges between workers’ unions and working people as users of public services would be crucial not only for the battles in the United States public transit system. It is a strategy that the different pitched battles against neoliberalism and the placing of profits above people will have to adopt and adapt in several ways. Another world is indeed possible...and so is another public transit system in the United State of North America.
as published in Global Labour News Issue 001, Oct-Dec, 2010
The attendant difficulties of livelihood to the economic crisis and rising fuel prices have made the need for an efficient and affordable public transport system a palpable one for millions of Americans. The response of the American State and private transit agencies has however been to drastically reduce funding for the sector, laying off workers and cutting down on supply and services rendered, due to the low or near absence of any significant profit accruing for them. This is a classic case of putting capitalist greed over and above the needs of the teeming mass of the country’s population.
Over 80% of the transit agencies in the US are cutting their services and/or hiking the fares for most routes. In New York City, which has the largest transit system in the country, 2 subway routes and 34 bus lines have been phased out, while night owl services have been cut. Free fares for students, as well, are facing attacks. In San Francisco, the transit passes for the elderly, physically challenged and youth, which used to cost $5 per month, now goes for upwards of $20.
The present state of the transit system which has been laid bare, by the broader economic crisis which makes more people dependent on it due to declining employment levels and restructuring of priorities of domestic budgets, while at the same time, it is being attacked instead of funding for it being increased, has deeper roots. The soil of these roots is the priority given to the profit motive in the development of infrastructure within a neoliberal paradigm of development. The distribution of appropriated federal funding for transportation is a major root that reflects this suffocating soil. 82% of the funds generated from transport taxes are ploughed into the building and maintenance of highways and other roads, with just 18% left for the public transit system. This is not all. The statutory provisions for the use of public funding for mass transit stipulate that just 10% of such can be expended on the system’s actual operations. The bulk of 90% has to be expended on capital projects such as the expansion of light rail lines and the purchase of heavy equipment. This of course is an avenue for lucrative contracts for private contractors that build or supply these. And interestingly, as in the present situation, the expansion of light rail lines amount to nothing, when mass transit is most needed by working people impoverished by the economic crisis; rather than increase subway services for example, they are being cut since they are not so profitable!
The concentration of resources on the construction and maintenance of highways is not without cause. An efficient and cost-effective mass transit system poses a huge threat to the automobile and oil and gas industries, with their huge and massively influential conglomerates.
A well funded and promoted mass transit system, while not as profitable for the expansion of capital as the increase of markets for single-user gas guzzling automobiles, would also be a huge step forward towards reducing carbon emission. The neoliberal paradigm which has guided the US transport policy is, however, no more concerned in truth than in deed about environmental sustainability than it is about the livelihood of transport workers or the fate of millions of mass transit users.
Transport workers’ unions in the United States are not taking the present attacks on the public transit system kneeling down. As transit agencies in San Francisco contemplate cuts in the wages of workers in the sector and in New York, management gets set to sack at least 1,700 workers, and with similar situations being replicated across the US, public transit workers are rousing in response. In New York and Atlanta, Portland and San Francisco, Washington DC and several other cities, public transit workers unions such as the Transportation Workers Union, Amalgamated Transit Union and United Transportation Union, are beginning to seize the bull by the horns, fighting to save the jobs and wages of their members and in defence of the public transport system. They are calling for increased funding, affordable fares and the expansion, rather than the constriction of services. They are also forging ties with riders and linking their demands with broader political-economic issues, making concrete propositions on the way forward to revamp the public transit system.
Some of their propositions include: reducing the numbers of persons in management cadres, being the ones who take such huge chunks of emoluments; utilizing public funds which are presently being used to prosecute wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for the bailouts of banks and other corporations such as General Motors, to shore up the public transit system &; instituting a progressive taxation system that would ensure that the rich who can better afford it, be made to pay for the collective good that an efficient and cost-effective public transport system is.
The battle ahead for the unions would be tough, but they seem ready for the long haul, fighting this just battle until the neoliberal rot in the United States public transport system is turned around. They have made their message clear at public hearings on mass transit in several states and they have also organized protest actions with the active support and participation of riders. Building such bridges between workers’ unions and working people as users of public services would be crucial not only for the battles in the United States public transit system. It is a strategy that the different pitched battles against neoliberalism and the placing of profits above people will have to adopt and adapt in several ways. Another world is indeed possible...and so is another public transit system in the United State of North America.
as published in Global Labour News Issue 001, Oct-Dec, 2010
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