All workers engaged in municipal, short distance transportation and telecommunication services.
Submitted on Tue, 06/08/2010 - 11:19am
Orginally Published for RVAnews [ http://rvanews.com/news/public-bus-users-fight-increasing-fares-route-cuts/28781 ]
Public bus users fight increasing fares, route cuts
by Erica Terrini
June 8, 2010
.Rushing down East Broad Street on a Wednesday morning, 19-year-old Laura McWilliams dons her work uniform and a smile as she talks about her son, who she supports with her job on Virginia Commonwealth University’s MCV Campus.
As a life-long rider, McWilliams says she relies on the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) to get to work every day, traveling approximately 20 minutes from her apartment in Henrico Country to Downtown Richmond.
The roaring engine of the GRTC bus can be heard almost as soon as it becomes visible, and for many riders like McWilliams, the far off sound is as routine as their morning cup of coffee. However, with proposals of increasing fare prices and inaccessibility by cutting routes, public transportation is taking a back seat when it comes to funding, and commuters are beginning to notice.
Submitted on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 8:15pm
The cameraphone videos which have surfaced on
YouTube seem like a scene out of some futuristic movie. But the cold-blooded murder is all-too real, and is one more tragic body in the capitalist carnage that is already hundreds of years old.
Police brutality and racism are just as much parts
of capitalism as the real estate brutality that we are all facing. The ruthlessness and seeming irrationality of the BART murder is no different that that of
a broker who evicts a family that can't pay their mortgage. Capitalism
is
the only social system that sees overproduction as a problem -- when
too many people have homes, they must be evicted until houses become profitable again. It is the same with us the workers, who have to
sell our labor to live and can only live as long as we can sell our labor. Capitalism has always seen us, not as human beings, but just as one
more thing to be bought and sold. This is why it has been starving the workers, especially those from ethnic minorities, in all the
industrial cities of America for the last thirty years. It is the same kind of
"market adjustment" that is happening with houses right now. They are both done with the same ruthlessness and they both require armed
thugs called police.
The capitalist media will claim that this is a case
of particularly bad cops, just as they claim that the economic crisis comes from bad
bankers. But bad cops and bad bankers will always exist as long as there are
cops and bankers, and there will always be cops and bankers as long as we allow ourselves to be robbed at work, as long as those who rob us
need men in ties to invest their stolen wealth and thugs to protect it.
Also, since our exploiters are only a tiny minority of society, they must divide up the majority. In the US, this , this means racism first and foremost. As Malcolm X said, "You can;'t have capitalism without
racism."
To get rid of a system that relies on murderers, the
workers of Oakland and the entire world have to develop a revolutionary form of
unionism, one that recognizes the inherent opposition between workers and
bosses and which wants to end exploitation. The Oakland General Strike of
1946, and the workers occupation of Republic Windows in 2008 both give us a glimpse of how powerful we really are.
We want to express our deepest condolences to the
family and friends of Oscar Grant, and on the issue of this police execution, we call for
the immediate arrest of the police involved on charges of first-degree murder.
Submitted on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 2:00pm
Statement for March 6 International Day of Action in Solidarity with
the Workers of Iran
The International Solidarity Commission of the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW), an international rank-and-file labor union, warmly
extends our solidarity with the workers of Iran, on this, the
occasion
of the March 6th Global Day of Action. Reflecting on the 100+ year
history of our own union, we in the IWW recognize that real victories
for workers have never come without struggle, hardship, and--all too
often--repression. For years now, the Iranian workers have bravely
faced down brutal opposition from government forces, right-wing
clerics and their supporters, and of course, the bosses themselves.
They have paid a terrible price for their efforts to bring about
justice in the workplace and in society. We know that workers,
organizers and activists have been harassed, threatened, beaten,
fined, fired, whipped, jailed and worse, simply for exercising their
right to organize.
Submitted on Sat, 08/05/2006 - 9:20pm
Hey everyone
IWW General Assembly is coming up. After two days of debating and a rally at the Shattuck Cinema, you can get a little bay area sun and exercise at the WobblyCat! This is going to be a great IWW themed bike race for local bike messengers and Wobblies coming from around the country.
The way it works is like this. We will all be meeting at a designated spot in San Francisco, where you will get a manifest listing all the stops you need to make around the city. (Out of towners won't have to make as many stops as locals, don't worry). We'll be visiting places like Dashiell Hammett's house (the Pinkertons tried to pay him $5000 to kill
Submitted on Sat, 07/15/2006 - 5:26pm
What happens when you have four dues paying wobblies, plus one treasurer of the SF Bike Messenger Association, plus one old wob from the 70’s, and a boss that could care less about the messenger division, all in one shop? In the case of Quicksilver Messenger in San Francisco—anything you want—and it was very easy.
We have just gone from being one of the worst messenger companies in the industry, to one of the best (and legal companies don’t count, since they charge their clients an arm and a leg). Actually, we haven’t gotten the paycheck to prove it yet, but it should be coming shortly.
We wanted our rates to be increased. We also wanted to change the zone map, because it was just not worth it to go to certain places. The fact that a delivery to Van Ness and Market gets you the same amount of money as a delivery to California and Divisadero is (I mean—was) completely ridiculous. And to add insult to injury, we were not even getting the 49% commission rate we thought we were getting because the company would first subtract a booking charge, making our rate more like 35-40%. That is illegal by the way, but we are going to let bygones be bygones, since from now on, we are going to be getting a straight 49% commission.
