Municipal Transportation Workers Industrial Union 540

All workers engaged in municipal, short distance transportation and telecommunication services.

San Francisco Bay Area IWW statement on Oscar Grant (executed by BART police)

Submitted by intexile on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 9:15pm.
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.

IWW statement for March 6 Day of Action

Submitted by intexile on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 3:00pm.

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.


Wobbly Cat!

Submitted by slava on Sat, 08/05/2006 - 10:20pm.

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

Quicksilver Messengers submit their demands. It was almost TOO easy.

Submitted by slava on Sat, 07/15/2006 - 6:26pm.

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.


Fresh Air! Speed! Poverty! Servitude!

Submitted by slava on Thu, 07/06/2006 - 9:04pm.

The founders of Chicago's first bike messenger collective think there's gotta be a better way.

Written by Scott Eden; photographs by Jon Randolph.

June 23, 2006
The Chicago Reader

RENE CUDAL WAS the last to quit. The Friday after Labor Day 2005 was the day he’d marked in his calendar, but he procrastinated all morning and afternoon, dreading the moment his boss would put two and two together. Finally the boss went home. Cudal called him that evening and gave him two weeks’ notice.

A bike messenger quitting isn’t so unusual—messengers will tell you they all develop a strategy to extract themselves from the job, which is defined by a high risk of bodily harm, low wages, and few or no benefits. Michael Carey, Cudal’s boss at On Time Courier, was a former messenger himself. But Carey, a big, block-shouldered man with a reputation as both a polished salesman and a hard-line intimidator, didn’t take Cudal’s news well. “What’s happening?” Cudal remembers him saying. “What are you doing? Starting your own messenger company?”


Bike messengers keep economy rolling

Submitted by intexile on Wed, 04/19/2006 - 10:45pm.
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (LETTER) - Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2006, By Sam Goldman

Chicago -- Upon reading the March 17 Chicago Tribune editorial "There oughta be a law," I was irked by the irresponsibility of this paper's assertion that "immunity from prosecution could be extended to any pedestrian who knocked over a bicycle messenger."

I remind you that bicycle messengers in Chicago play an important role in lubricating the wheels of our economy.

I am a messenger in Chicago, and a delegate in the Chicago Couriers Union, and there are roughly 300 bike messengers in Chicago.

We pick up and deliver thousands of documents, packages, meals, and odds and ends to and from Chicago's corporations, law firms, restaurants, architecture firms, hospitals, municipal building, courts, banks, retail shops and residences.

New York fines transit union $2.5 million, jails leader

Submitted by intexile on Wed, 04/19/2006 - 12:02pm.

Staff Report - Industrial Worker, May 2006 

A state supreme court judge has ordered New York Transit Workers Union Local 100 to pay the state a $2.5 million fine, revoked the union's right to collect dues from workers' pay checks, and sentenced President Roger Toussaint to 10 days in jail and a $1,000 fine for refusing a court order to cancel the December mass transit strike. Subway and bus workers have also been docked several days' pay for joining the strike.

Toussaint called off the transit strike on its third day without an agreement; in January union members voted down the concessionary settlement the Metropolitan Transportation Authority offered when workers were back on the job.


Support the bus worker's struggle in Iran!

Submitted by intexile on Thu, 03/23/2006 - 8:20pm.
Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadjinejad,
President of the Republic
The Presidency,
Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection
Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran
Fax: + 98-21-6648.06.65 or: + 98 21 649 5880

 

Dear Mr. President,

We have written you in the past concerning the situation with the bus workers and their union in Tehran. We understand that the situation has escalated since we last wrote you. The International Solidarity Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World wrote you previously requesting the release of imprisoned union activists and leaders. At that time no release occurred, and the workers sought to strike in protest of the illegimate and brutal repression on their coworkers and comrades. We have read that security forces of your government preemptively arrested and beat workers, and their families including workers' wives and children. Thereafter an international campaign was launched to free these workers from wrongful harm. We understand that now most of the arrested workers have been freed.