The View From 1776

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New York City’s Christmas-time subway strike illustrates two basic aspects of radical unionism. 

First, these unions have their roots in anarchism, socialism, and in communism, the revolutionary sect of socialism.  Unions such as the Transport Workers Union (TWU), teachers unions, and other public employee unions are genealogical descendants of the violently radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and therefore have no compunctions about causing illegal, massive distress to the public, which is innocent of any purported injustices to the workers.

The genealogy of the TWU begins with the violent practices of the IWW and one of its original constituents, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), regarding which, see IWW – Organized Crime in the Labor Market and More IWW Violence.

Franklin Roosevelt’s election to the presidency in 1932 and subsequent passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Wagner labor act gave the radical industrial unions a big boost.  Organizing industry-wide unions of non-skilled workers became legally protected and directly aided by Federal authorities.  The largest of these, set up in 1934 within the crafts unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).  John Sheridan, head of the old IWW’s Western Federation of Miners (its name changed by then to International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers) was one of the CIO’s original organizers.  In 1937, the CIO split from the AFL and became a separate union group.

The TWU, that same year, joined the CIO.  Its most important founder, and its head until his death in 1966, was Mike Quill, who was closely involved with the Communist Party USA until 1948.  Quill claimed to have been an operative in the IRA terrorist organization in his native Ireland.  His TWU tactics and attitude toward elected officials and the general public gave credibility to that claim.

Second, by propagandizing public opinion and manipulating politicians with their financial and other support, these radical, public employee unions subvert the indirect representational government established by the Constitution.  Liberal-Progressive theorists assert that laws can be changed and the Constitution amended, without regard to the Constitutionally-mandated procedures, merely by manipulating public opinion.  Radical unions have been among the most powerful forces influencing public opinion. 

A no-longer-remembered fact is that, in the 1944 election, Franklin Roosevelt’s opponent Thomas E. Dewey got half a million more votes in New York on the Republican line than FDR got on the Democratic line.  FDR’s slender margin of victory in New York came from Earl Browder’s American Communist Party and from Sidney Hillman’s American Labor Party.  Hillman was also the founder and long-time head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.  During the 1920s he too had actively supported revolutionary actions in the Soviet Union and had been acclaimed by the American Communist Party.

When President Roosevelt was too sick to appear at the Democratic Party nominating convention in 1944, shortly before his death, party leaders asked who should be tapped for the Vice Presidency.  FDR’s reply was “clear it with Sidney [Hillman].” That is, under the socialist state-planning of FDR’s New Deal, a radical labor leader held veto power over the choice for the second highest elective office in the nation, the man who in fact became President only months later.

To understand the extortionate impact of the TWU strike in New York City, non-New Yorkers need to know that, particularly in Manhattan, every-day traffic is so dense that one literally can reach most destinations in mid-town faster by walking within a ten-block radius than by driving or taking a cab.  For most people, the only really time-effective way to get about within Manhatttan and from the far reaches of Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx, is to take the subway, which doesn’t have to contend with traffic lights and traffic congestion.  According to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which operates the subways and buses, about 4.5 million people ride the subways on an average weekday.

This means that an illegal strike by subway and bus workers literally paralyzes the city and wipes out normal Christmas shopping time, because people are forced to spend many extra hours getting to and from their homes and their workplaces in streets that are even more crowded than usual with cars that normally would not enter the city.

Under the New York State Public Employees Fair Employment Act of 1967, popularly known as the Taylor Law, public employees are prohibited from striking, and penalties for violation theoretically can be assessed against a striking union and its members.  But the trifling matter of obeying the law is often safely ignored, because these unions are the largest source of campaign funds and free campaign workers at election time.  They also spend vast amounts of money on TV advertising to support liberal-Progressive candidates.

In New York City, the TWU has a long history of thumbing its nose at the citizens of New York, defiantly breaking the law and daring politicians to do anything about it.  New York, being a top-to-bottom socialist welfare state, its citizens historically side with the unions and pressure politicians to meet union demands, no matter how outrageous.  Especially is this true in New York City, where the public sector and its welfare-state apparatus constitute by far the biggest local industry, and Greenwich Village was home to the original American socialist literary groups. 

Note that the TWU and other liberal-Progressive-socialist groups rely on the French Revolution’s technique of propaganda to incite mob action against the legitimate political authorities.  It doesn’t matter what the law says, if opinion polls can be manipulated by a friendly left-wing media establishment to create public support for illegal action and extortionate demands.

The subway strike’s PR nature was evident when publicity-hungry Jesse Jackson arrived in town for rounds of photo-ops expressing solidarity with the “oppressed” workers.

Facts, however, are somewhat different.  TWU workers already have far better pay and extraordinarily better health benefits than other New York City workers doing comparable work.  As the Wall Street Journal described it, “... New York’s poor, downtrodden transit workers, who earn an average of $55,000 a year and have gold-plated health and other benefits. The union is demanding 8%-a-year raises for each of the next three years and lowering of the age at which a worker can retire with full benefits to 50 from 55. No wonder New York is sometimes called the City of Dreams.”

TWU leaders denounced the city for resisting their ridiculous demands, telling the public that the subway system has a large surplus fund that ought to be used for that purpose. 

This is a selfish and dangerous position.  It ignores the continuing necessity of maintaining and upgrading the system’s tracks and trains, not to mention beefing up subway system security against Islamic terrorists in the city’s 468 subway stations and 842 miles of track, all too vulnerable and an obvious first-choice point of attack. 

The TWU’s public-be-damned attitude flows directly from the radical socialism and anarchism of its genealogical predecessor, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW): they care nothing for right or wrong, and are prepared to use any tactics that will bludgeon management into submission to their demands.  After all, in socialist theory, such tactics are just additional ways to bring about socialism’s social justice: equal distribution of property and income in order to perfect society and humanity.  The liberal-Progressive corollary is that world peace will follow automatically when socialist planners succeed in redistributing income and wealth through the UN, so there will theoretically be no Islamic terrorist threat.

The hopeful aspect of the subway strike was that public officials – the governor, mayor, and head of the MTA – denounced the TWU strike in scathing terms and a judge issued an injunction imposing million-dollar-a-day fines on the union.  This was possible because, for the first time in decades, New Yorkers’ expressed disgust with the union’s action.  New York is still overwhelmingly a blue, socialist state.  But maybe a few glimmers of common sense are being detected from within the fog.

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