Today is the second day of the strike by taxi drivers in New York City. If you didn’t read the details elsewhere, there is some reporting in The New York Times today. I’ll get to the issues in a sec. But, first, here’s a little from the leader of the Alliance, Bhairavi Desai, from an interview published a couple of years ago:

I grew up in a family where both bread-and-butter and social justice were always on the table. My parents were socially conscious. I grew up poor and as I became older and I started to read about the inequities of the world and how inequities are structured and systematic, I also learned about resistance and movements and the power of people to make change. It’s that combination of recognizing exploitation and in that same breath, recognizing the ability of people to transform the world. And that really is, for me, the essence of social change work. And so as I was growing older, I became really politicized by the Palestinian movement as well as the Nicaraguan struggle. I grew up in the ‘80s at the time of Iran-Contra, and it never sat well with me that the US should be dictating to another country the policies and politics of another nation. Even as a 13-year-old, I knew it was wrong. When I would watch the news, I saw Nicaraguans and Palestinians fighting for justice, and they looked like myself and my family and my friends, and so that image really resonated with me. It very much shaped my confidence in social justice movements.

    Is the Alliance a union?

We are a combination of both, which means we’re a union. To me, workers are the army of the oppressed. And services are like treating the wounded, services are to bring people back up on their feet so that they can be healthier and safer and stronger to wage the economic battles in the industry. And working people represent a power that is only paralleled by the wealthy in this society. They’re not in power, unlike the wealthy, but when organized, they have power. And especially in a society like this, where everything is about money and maximizing profits, you cannot change society without using the power of labor. And so we, as an organization, are a democratic mass-based membership union of taxicab drivers that are organizing to change their lives through changing working conditions, and through that, changing society as a whole. And by that I mean, when a group of workers for example, settle on a contract, the wages set by that contract become either the new floor or the new ceiling. We want to raise up the floor and destroy that ceiling.

    So, really, though the Alliance is not technically a union (largely because its members are all independent contractors who don’t have collective bargaining rights similar to other workers), it seems the struggles and the issues are no different from what a union is about. It’s one reason the Alliance has quickly been welcomed by the New York City Central Labor Council–and kudos to the Council and executive director Ed Ott for being right out front with the Alliance in working to make the strike a success (and I’d only say: I wish the Alliance had a website that I could point you to). [UPDATE: thanks to Skunisi–comments section–for finding the website–http://www.nytwa.org …I couldn’t, for the life of me, track it down easily…someone needs to help those folks link it up]

    The stated issues of the strike are important: the Taxi and Limousine Commission is forcing the drivers to install tracking systems (generically, think G.P.S. for those of you out there who still drive cars and live in cities without real mass transit systems) and payment systems that will process credit cards.

    The larger issue, though, is one of power: these drivers want to have more control over decisions that are made in their working lives. Like everyone.

    And, yet, there has been, as far as I can tell, very little support for the strike from the progressive movement. This has a disturbing resemblance to the reaction of too many progressives and people generally to the transit workers strike a couple of winters ago here in NYC. People don’t like to be inconvenienced–who does?–and so they either hold back their support because they are annoyed or fail to see how the strike is being waged really for the rights of all (which is why I think, again to its credit, the central labor council is standing with the Alliance very strongly).

    But, when people go out on strike to protect their health care, pensions and basic rights on the job–this sounds so obvious perhaps that it feels like a cliche–they are trying to uphold a standard for all. If taxi drivers don’t have some modicum of power on the job, why should you?