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Future of Work and Unions Debated at AFL-CIO,  as Taxi Workers Affiliate with Federation

October 24, 2011

A panel at the AFL-CIO discusses the future of work and unions on the day that the National Taxi Workers Alliance affiliates with the federation.

A seminal 15-year struggle for bargaining rights by taxicab drivers and the spreading “occupy” movement have more in common than origins in New York City, said members of a forum on the future of work at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

Attended by U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the Oct. 20 charter presentation to the National Taxi Workers Alliance was an opportunity to discuss changing employment relationships based on common interest, not necessarily a shared workplace.

In his remarks, Trumka spoke of the unraveling of the employer/employee relationship seen in the proliferation of subcontracting, temporary agencies, part time workers and the rise of the independent contractor.

It’s a business model where minimum wage, health and safety and workers’ rights become exceedingly difficult to enforce.

As a result, Trumka said, workers face a declining living standards and increasing alienation from each-other. Over the past five years, the AFL-CIO has been engaged in strategic organizing around new types of work and employment relationships, including partnering with networks of worker centers, many in immigrant and low-wage communities. The affiliation with the Taxi Workers Alliance, the newest union to join the AFL-CIO, is the furthest step taken so far to involve workers groups in the broader labor movement.

Driving a taxi is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, with drivers 30 times more likely to be killed on the job than other workers. They are excluded from collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act. In the late 1970s, following lobbying from taxi owners who convinced local governments to change the law, taxi drivers were stripped of rights, salaries and benefits. The attitude by the cab companies conveyed to the drivers was: “You have no independence, but you’re an independent contractor,” said Bhairavi Desai, of the National Taxi Workers Alliance, who co-founded the New York Taxi Workers Alliance in 1998. The alliance has 15,000 yellow taxicab drivers.

Speaking about the workers’ battles against the mayoral administration of Rudolph Giuliani and its corporate supporters, Desai said:

Most of corporate America is not used to fighting. They are pissed off they have to fight. The more we fought, the more we could win because they weren’t used to fighting. The only thing they could do is buy the politicians. Ultimately you have power with money or you have it with people.

Said panel participant Justin Molito, organizing director for the Writers Guild of America, East:

‘Union’ is defined by collective bargaining power, by people coming together and fighting. It’s not defined by a collective bargaining agreement.

Said Trumka, of the taxi workers, the 57^th organization to be affiliated with the federation:

Taxi workers in New York are one of the most notable examples of workers who overnight technically lost their right to bargain. Yet they have organized and exercised enough collective power to be treated by the taxi commissioner and the mayor as if they were still a regular union. It wasn’t easy, but today they are breaking new ground as they build power for immigrant taxi drivers in a growing number of cities.

(Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., longtime (1933-1968) visionary business manager of New York Local 3, organized the taxi drivers in New York City and was a driving force in organizing hospital workers in the city. The hospital workers union, SEIU 1199, later became one of the single largest unions in the city, with over 100,000 members.)

Comparing the occupy movement to the fight for collective bargaining by the taxi workers, home health care workers and writers, Bill Cruice of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals said:

The spontaneous movement of the 99 percent is real. We are never going to go back to two months ago. This country is changing. This is a new day.