Video interview with John Ferretti and Seth Rosenberg of the Local 100 Fight Back Coalition. Full transcript below the video.

John Reimann
We’re talking here with Seth Rosenberg and John Ferretti. They’re both members of the Local 100 Fight Back coalition. That’s a coalition in the Transit Workers Union local 100. They’re subway workers in New York City, and we wanted to talk to them, because they have a very important contract coming up. And I wanted to get their sense of of their views on it. But maybe we could start with the huge national and international issue going on right now, which is the US Israeli war against Iran. And I’m just wondering if you would talk a little bit about your members. Know they’re talking about that, how they see it, that sort of thing.

John Ferretti
Well, I mean, in terms of the war in Iran, as you know, the polls across the country are catastrophic in terms of the level of support that any war has ever had in recent memory, you know, in terms of popularity, in terms of people seeing it as a necessary war and not a war of choice. People see it as, you know, war of aggression. And a lot of people see it as a proxy of fight for Israel, and, you know, for a foreign country. So people don’t want their children to be sent to this war. Obviously they. The United States has a long, long history of anti war sentiment amongst the working class, because it’s after all, the working class that gets sent to fight and die for laws of imperialist you know, Imperial, imperialism, objectives and throughout the world, however, you know, I’m sure there’s all sorts of mixed consciousness. There’s all sorts of false consciousness about the danger of the mullahs being, you know, clerical, you know, fascist and brutal authoritarians in terms of cracking down on pro democracy struggles in Iran, and obviously, as Trotskyist and the socialist me and Seth stand completely against the political program of that state. However, the dialog that we’re trying to have with workers is that, what is the main threat to democratic rights across the world? What is the main threat to the working class? What is the main danger in terms of providing any real future for working class people, not only in Iran, all over the world, and that is the blood soaked imperialist machine that exploits us all, and by the US attacking that regime, it’s only strengthened the regime, it’s only strengthened their power to continue to engage in mass repression.

John Reimann
It would be really interesting to hear just what members are saying. Just you could give you and Seth, if you just give some examples, you know whether you agree with them or not, is another question.

Seth Rosenberg
I’m on a couple WhatsApp chats with them, with co workers who are on the same train line that I work on. I don’t think there’s been anyone posted anything that’s pro war. I posted a lot of anti war stuff. Certainly. I think one actor that’s really resonating with people, that people are talking about is just how crazy gas prices the buzzword now it’s on everyone’s mind, especially in New York, one of the places where working class people the hardest time affording stuff. TIt was even before the war was already bad and it was on everyone’s minds, and then for the gas prices to go up, and you’re seeing, you know, inflation on other things starting to creep up above 4% I think people are really angry. Where it just connects up with the fact that it’s an unpopular war to begin with. So a lot of people are just focusing on, or at least talking about, how difficult life is and how the costs are really going out of control. I have a pretty strong, quantitative background. From the experts I talk about that it’s even, even if it were to resolve, it’s going to get worse. And so II’m going to keep talking to my co workers about that, and see how it goes. I think, with respect to more political stuff, I think that certainly anti Trump voices among my co workers have gotten stronger. And one co worker shared some of the pretty hilarious and incisive Lego videos made by the Iranian state social media campaign, which I think were very effective in a lot of ways. There was some, certainly some stuff in there that I found objectionable. I think Epstein is also still on people’s minds as well. And a lot of my co workers have talked about how Epstein, that, you know, they believe that the war, that at least partially the war, was connected to Epstein. And this is what people are bringing up at work, or on an online chat or just in conversations at work,

It’s more on an online chat based the way, because of the nature of our workplace, where people are in and out all the time. It’s not like everyone’s sitting around for a period of time. So these chats are really the main social interactions, I think, between between people.

John Reimann
I live in a overwhelmingly working class neighborhood, and what I’ve noticed in the last few weeks is a couple of my neighbors are bringing up stuff about Trump and politics with me, my bringing it up with them. You know, when we pass each other in the street or something, I’m curious. I’m interested to know that might just be a couple of like incidents, but it’d be interesting to know if that’s part of a general trend.

John Ferretti
I think it is, and I think that’s evidenced by the no kings protests and how massive they were, and how much even Normie Democrats have been radicalized about Trump and the war and and just the gutting of social safety nets and all of that. But I also think you can even see it like recently, there was a epidemic of warehouse fires where, you know, in California, I think it was a paper products factory was burned to the ground. There was an Amazon warehouse was also burned to the ground. There was one out here in Queens, and the joke on the left was that this was, this was not Luigi. This was the other character Mario, so basically that there was a lot of social media stuff, like on Tiktok, of people saying, “Look, you know, we don’t buy it anymore, that you get to do violence to us every day, and we do nothing.” And you know, people were like looking to it as spark of revolution right now. Obviously, we know there’s all sorts of problems with that. Individual actions of violence, but it really speaks to how, how radicalized the American consciousness has become in a short period of time that people are willing to be open minded about like, what tactics and strategies really need to be engaged in in order to fight back against a class that just lets us die and just abandons us in an economic crisis. But I think also, like I get a sense amongst my co workers that they feel like they’re hostages, like they’re being taken hostage by Trump in terms of the economy and in terms of this war, you know, they feel like it’s kind of like a runaway train they have no control over, I know in our contract struggle, like people have always been very anxious about our living standards and our ability to keep up with the price of cost of living and the price of inflation. And in a very expensive city, when you throw the war into that, it’s like lighting that on fire with gasoline, because there is no contract that we could agree to that could ever secure a real keeping pace with inflation, given that economic driver.

John Reimann
So let’s go on then to the contract.

John Ferretti
Our contract expires on May 15 to 12:01am.

John Reimann
What are the main issues in the contract?

John Ferretti
Well, the main issue is that we have gone to the bargaining table for the fourth consecutive negotiation with no wage demand at all. Our demand from the bosses for wages are significant wage increases.

John Reimann
What demands do you put forward?

John Ferretti
The coalition that we’re a part of closed called Transit Workers for a Just Contract, and it’s a coalition of socialist minded and progressive trade unionist, longtime activists within the union. And the demand that we have put forward is a $5 per hour wage increase in each year of a three year contract, we’ve also called for no concessions, no give backs and the basically the equalization of the pension program to allow. We’ve also called for no concessions, no give backs, and the basically the equalization of the pension program to allow Tier 6members out of a poverty pension program and reach progression, to reach out pay to a single year. So there, there are a number of demands that we’ve made that actually correspond to the real world that trend.

Tier six was established on April 1 of 2012 it was a bill passed by Governor Cuomo and the state legislature. And basically what it did was it put a cap on overtime to go towards your pension, so if you couldn’t make above, I think it’s 15% above. Okay, so in other words, traditionally, what had happened is that transit workers would work a whole lot of overtime during a three year period. So the best, the average of the best three years in any five year period would be how you determine your final average salary. CS, six members couldn’t do that because they had a longer it was a five year period, and there was a cap on the overtime. They also paid between two and a half and 6% contribution for their pension. Whereas tier tier four, which is what me and south are in, we have a cap of 2% that we paid towards a pension. Now originally under tier one and tier two, there was no contribution. So as you can see, things a little by little, being given away. And the reason for the give back and the attack on pensions to make them basically poverty pensions that nobody can afford to retire on, is because they’re paying off $54 billion to Wall Street parasites who own the bond debt which subsidizes the MTA service. So like people think that the MTA is a public employer, that you work directly for the state, me and Seth and every other transit worker in the system, we work effectively to collect profits for Wall Street, right? So that’s how

John Reimann
So you’re calling for $5 an hour, way wage increase per year. And are there any other issues that you that you guys are raising, or that you think should be raised?

John Ferretti
Obviously, cost of living adjustments tying our wages to the rate of inflation. The real drivers of inflation, like, for example, food or gas prices.

John Reimann
Going back in the 70s, lot of the what the COLAs, cost of living adjustment. Thre were in a lot of contracts with a cost of living adjustment – COLAs.

John Ferretti 

Yeah. Not anymore, yeah. They were given away after the 70s, like fiscal crisis and after, after the 80s boom. 

John Reimann
A lotof that thing about that – that is not just any cola. I think it has to be a full and uncapped Cola, and because not every time they’ll pass it off as a cost of living adjustment. When you look at the small print, it’s not, it’s only up to a point. You’re only a part of the increased cost of living.

A lot of even those people, even those unions who do have Cola, a lot of them, are tied to like, the Consumer Price Index, which is manipulated by the federal government, and doesn’t include a whole bunch of things that are real drivers of inflation. So the only way I can see that we could actually have a cost of living adjustment that is uncapped and actually reflects the real rate of inflation is to tie it to food prices or gas prices, which actually drive each other.

I want to share something here in 1980 it changed the way that inflation was measured. And so if you look here, you can see the red line here the way it’s measured now. Blue line is what it would be if it was measured back in 1980 and you can see this is about 2023, about double, but it was, this is from a website, Shadow stats.

John Ferretti
Just so we contrast what our strategy is in terms of the real needs of working class people to survive in the city that they serve. To contrast that with the union leadership’s approach. The Union leadership’s approach is to find a medium ground where bosses can get what they want and we can get what we want, and we all know that that’s impossible, that their interests are diametrically opposed to ours, and so they don’t want to make demands that might scare off the bosses or seem too radical, because they’re looking to come to a number that that is acceptable to the bosses, and that number has been two and a half 3% I mean, maybe now it’ll be three and a half or 4% but it really it’s like spitting in the wind. It’s not going to actually solve the crisis of affordability that we have.

John Reimann

You guys had a meeting yesterday online tand one of your members, Anthony Steiniger, talked about breaking the law, and he pointed out, really no progress has been made for workers without breaking the law. Would you guys want to, want to talk about that Seth, maybe, since you haven’t said very much, maybe you’d like to chime in.

Seth Rosenberg
I wasn’t at the meeting yesterday, but there’s, there’s a couple of things to say. Let me a little add a little bit to what John said, and then I can forward on that framework, or the paradigm that our Union’s been in for the past 15 years, if not more, maybe even since the five strike:

Toussaint really didn’t want to strike, and he he was pressured to do so by the members, and came back after two and a half days without a deal, and ended up with a worse deal that they went in with and I think that really broke the heart of the union in a lot of ways.

So since then our leaders have been incredibly weak, and basically the framework is that MTA comes in with a certain amount that they’re willing to give for the contract, which is very meager, and if we want to get any raises above that, and the union leadership has to figure out what they’re going to give up, how they’re going to stab us in the back with respect to health care, or whether it’s giving away stuff with respect to, like, workplace rules, or whether it’s giving away stuff with respect to what’s the other thing, wage progression, stuff like that, in order to get retiree, yeah, retirees, no new hires, all that. And so basically they every year, they say, “Well, your raises are 2%.” So what’s that happened is that, our are not fighters, they’re just bureaucrats. They basically, they’re like, “Well, we’re going to figure out what we can get away with selling out the members with” and so every contract, there have been significant givebacks. And even with that, like, – take the pandemic right during the inflation spike. You know, inflation was officially, like 9% our wage increase that year was roughly 3% so we lost 6% of our real wages just in that year.

So when we as rank and file members talk to our co workers about this, we explain that you have leaders who aren’t willing to fight or weren’t willing to organize us to fight right? It’s the members. The members have the power. We have a lot of power transit, year after year they, you know, sometimes, most of the time, they don’t even talk to them. Every once in a while, they’ll say stuff, but it never really materializes. And what never happens is never in the field, they come out and try and energize us and try and build our consciousness up and say, people we can fight and win, right? And get organized, and we have a plan to do this, and this is what we’re going to do. I’m not saying that leaders can do it themselves. Obviously they can’t, but leaders, if you were going to run for office in a union to get elected, then you’re an officer, right in an officer, and it’s not, in my view, unlike the military, because we are in a class war against the bosses. So if we want to win, right, and the way that we have to win is we have to turn into a force that’s coherent, that’s militant, that is ready to stand up and get leverage to accomplish our demands. And you know, we can talk about breaking the law. I’ll get to that in a second. But even without that, the fact is that everyone who works for transit knows and this is true for a lot of industrial jobs that we work because the bosses, they say one thing with the rules, but they want us to work unsafe. Want in order to get their productivity, to get the trains moving and stuff like that. They have the rules on the books that they’ll use against us, but when it really comes down to it, they want us to move the trains right. And so big thing and that affects us, right? It’s unsafe us as well. So one major thing that can be done is just for the good of our workers, is Safety Enforcement, right? Working following the rules, working safe, and when they push back on us, we say, these are the rules that you gave us, and that could have a massive effect on the system and make things safer for us, yet our leadership refuses to organize that and mobilize people for that.

You asked John, you asked about what people were thinking about the Iran war. And that’s a good question. We discussed that some, but I can tell you that this time around in this contract now there’s a real divide right with respect to people’s consciousness on like, what the class struggle means and how to fight back. There are people who I think are still learning, and they’re very raw, and there’s a lot of confusion and a lot of listeners at the same time, there’s a huge amount of anger. People are incredibly angry. So when I’m talking to people on the job, you know, to new people, tier six people, a lot of people are just like, “fuck it all strike”, and then they’ll get into the conversation about the Taylor Law and all that. And, you know, a lot of people are like, “well, we can’t strike because the Taylor Law.” And then I or other people bring up, “it’s like, you can strike. It’s not like they’re going to go out and arrest everyone who strikes. I mean, that defeats the purpose.” But the fact is that upi get a penalty unless you get amnesty. That leads to a whole conversation. But the end, you know, the real power we have as workers is to strike. The Taylor Law, in my view, is unconstitutional and a basic violation of the human rights of every worker. Right. If you’re, if you’re not able to withhold your labor right in a in a in a struggle, then you’re basically defenseless. So, you know, we but even, even with tucson’s defeat, the 2005 strike made news around the world, because in New York City, basically when we stopped working, the whole system shuts down. So, right, the whole

John Reimann
So here’s the question you’re going to, especially in public sector, if you’re going to go out on strike, you’re going to violate the law. Then you need public support. To put it differently, you need support of the rest of the working class. You know that we saw in 2011 with the public sector strike in Wisconsin was a human cry. “All these workers are selfish. They want things that nobody else has”, etc, etc. How do you deal with that?

John Ferretti
Well, I think see this is what’s missing from our struggle, is that it’s not a class struggle, right? So there’s a reason why the =bureaucrats,, the bosses and their media, their paid propagandists, can make this argument that we only care about ourselves, that, you know, trade union work is one of the biggest free lunch in the world. They have the handout for free ride, while all the rest of you don’t even, couldn’t even conceive of having the kind of benefits or wages that they have, right? And it’s part of, part of the reason why they get away with that is because our union leadership’s gives them the bat to beat us with by not, for example, standing for free mass transit, standing for no fare increases, no service cuts, increase safety and funding for public services. We don’t fight for our communities. I live in a community called Rochdale village, where many transit workers live, many other union workers live, that received a 31.2% increase in a single year for me and my family, there was $360 more a month. And not a peep has been said by the union leaderships about fighting for our pension funds. By the way, workers who are watching this, did you know that the there is currently $8 trillion being controlled by union pension funds across the country, and where is that money being invested? It’s being invested in Israeli genocide. It’s being invested in military contractors. It’s being invested in hedge funds, ie our class enemies, those who are destroying the world around us and any future for working class.

John Reimann
Would you think of demanding that your union explain we’re fighting for $5 an hour wage increase. We want that for all workers.

Unknown Speaker
I think that absolutely should be the dimension.

John Reimann
And we’re going to organize public meetings for all workers, workers anywhere tand we’re going to join with them to fight for $5 an hour wage increase, and not just say that verbally, but actually start organizing along those lines. Maybe it could be called “$5/hour raise clubs”.  Then if you go on strike, make that of a general campaign like that. What do you think of that?

John Ferretti
Well, I think, I think that’s that’s a good, good idea and a good next step, and we’re already beginning to exercise that within transit workers for for a just contract, because we are reaching out to every other MTA transit worker as a first step to build a united fight of all trans workers against their MTA bosses. And I think that’s a common sense next step to broaden the struggle. But I, you know, I do think that we also have to build from where we are in steps of, you know, escalating as we go. We have to acknowledge the crisis of leadership within the working class, and we also need to understand that actions that we need to take, we need to prepare for. So me and Seth are not advocating for a strike right now. We are not telling workers that that must be the demand right now as the next step, we’re honest with workers that if we’re real trade unionists, we want to follow the democratic will of the membership, and the membership should decide tactics and strategy based on the struggle that they lead, that they have an active role leading part of the problem. We don’t want a disorganized strike, because a disorganized strike at the wrong time that is crushed in the field could be a devastating example that could turn popular consciousness backwards like we want. We we want a strike that’s actually under the control of rank and file members, where you have strike committees, where you have rank and file committees are actually doing the work of organizing themselves and leading themselves.

John Reimann
Seth, would you like to add anything?

Seth Rosenberg
One thing I want to add with respect to the whole like trying to build solidarity across the working class is I want to throw in: John (Ferretti) mentioned in past years when we’ve been involved in contract struggle, we’ve always put forward no fare hikes, no service cuts, and as part of the idea of trying to show the rest of the working class that we are on their side and they tried to shut down, or they tried to take out elevator operators who are or our union who were community felt like were important. We were trying to close booths, token booths. We would we went out, and we would join and form a coalition with politicians and community members to push back against the MTA on that, and I think that’s an important thing I want to throw out that I feel like, you know, there’s a lot of discussion about Mamdani in general, we’ve been supportive of his campaign and of his victory on the fact that it’s really bringing a lot of issues. We may disagree with some of his politics, but really bringing key issues to the fore with respect to the need for class struggle so forth.

And I think that his proposal for free busses has been a big is a big thing that can really used when it’s the type of thing that it’s, it’s my view criminal that our union hasn’t come out and endorse that and said that that’s really, you know, a working class proposal, and would be a real victory. It’s certainly, I make a little side detour, I think, certainly among our union leadership, but also honestly among some of the members as well. There is a real sectoral thing there where they identify with the TA, and they’re like, well, we need these fares because that’s what the TA uses to pay us, right, not recognizing the larger struggle that it’s like the MTA is, effectively, regardless of what you say, you know, it’s funded by the state. Significant portion comes from the state. Some, you know, I think about half comes from fares. And that really what’s needed is this is a public service, and it needs to be funded by taxing the rich and so, so there is like, you know, capitalism creates this us against them, mentality, unfortunately. And you have people who I debate with who are like, well, you know, we should. And I’m like, I don’t, you know, they’re like, well, we should, you know, keep the bears, because that’s what we get paid. And the fact is, it’s like, even just give you an example, right?

Seth Rosenberg

Yeah, so congestion pricing, once again. We were against it. We think that it should be that transit should be funded based on a tax on the rich and on corporations, the stock market. But, you know, but it passed and brought in a lot of money for the MTA, but the MTA isn’t that using that money to pay us, that MTA is using that money for its big projects and stuff like that. And so this idea transit workers have to get out of this idea that somehow, right, the MTA, you know, having more fares, or that making sure that fares are collected is really what’s going to us paid. They don’t, you know, they’re going to try and regardless whether they get money from the government or whether they’re getting money, prepared, they’re going to try and screw us over no matter what so. But I think that, I think that month donnie’s push for public busses, for free busses, is a very positive thing. And then, you know, you probably followed it, that he just was, you know, Ian is working, you know, in his political ways. And I wouldn’t say it’s a major victory, but I think certainly symbolically and is a victory this acts on pied de Terres, which I think one thing you could say about it is it really has people starting to more about class and class consciousness in the city

John Reimann
Where has Mamdani stood?

John Ferretti
He’s not part of negotiating our contract the government, H’s in favor of our union winning wage increases commensurate inflation, but so Mamdani is not going to take a public position on how much we should make, because it would basically be undermining local. I Mamdani is principally for workers, but he, he plays this game with the bureaucracy that he has to be silent about. He has to engage in solidarity, a broad sense, but not a specific demand or proposal, other than the free busses, that’s a concrete way in which he is making a demand that actually helps our cause, but the union so clueless that it’s not even using that step that he’s taken to say that this is A way for so wait forward for transit workers. So, I mean, I don’t agree with his strategy. I think he should be making demands about, you know, what a living wage would really look like for all workers?

Like, for example, he’s proposed a $30 an hour minimum wage, which would be a massive step forward. But if you’re really for everyone making a living wage, and you have to be for all workers rage wages rising. And he won’t publicly say that, I think that’s a failure in his part. I just I don’t think that it’s that it’s consistent with his with his politics, but I also think, I also think it is the role that anybody in that position as mayor has to play, has to engage in some kind of relationship with the governor and maintain from maintain some kind of relationship, that he can actually extract concessions from that relationship. So it’s so we have our differences with his strategy. I mean, ultimately, we don’t believe that socialism is going to come through, taking the reins of the capitalist government and using it for the working class. We don’t, we don’t think that that’s possible. We think that’s utopian.

John Reimann
It seems to me that part of the problem is, the core of the problem is they say, “look, there’s so much money available for the transit system, and you can divide it up any way you like within that” so the alternative is to say, “no, look at all the wealth that’s out here.: I mean, you can point to that very easily in New York City, and so we don’t accept those limitations.

John Ferretti
The entire strategy of the union leadership is psychologically bankrupt and represents the massive statement of a lack of self respect on a part of the working class without demands, nobody knows what we’re fighting for, even the workers themselves, and even more importantly, the rest of the working class doesn’t know what we’re fighting for. So it’s very easy to be scapegoated for a crisis of funding than the MTA for the bosses to point at us and say we’re the cause of the crisis, and that’s fundamentally an anti working class leadership. It’s a pro capitalist leadership that hands us over to the bosses by not doing the most basic things to advocate for our class.

Seth Rosenberg
I wanted to point out that one thing we haven’t mentioned, with respect to our situation in our union, is that the bureaucrats are getting worse and worse, with respect to like they’re they’re almost dispensing with elections now for the top position. I think John, is it right? Right?

John Ferretti
John Fiorelllo was appointed as president of the Union after the last president, Richard Davis, who was engaging in rape culture, where he would lock women in his office and attempt to sexually assault them, where he went across the street from the union hall engaged in a physical assault of a union employee who was a bus operator who he put on the payroll because he was in a relationship with her. So this is the kind of disgusting rot that is at the heart of the way our union bureaucracy functions. It’s a manifestation of white privilege and sexism, and that’s what John Fiorello sits at the top of. That’s what John Samuelson sits at the top of. And they’ve also engaged in massive voter suppression. They use covid as an excuse to ban workers from voting in their own elections on their own contracts. So I mean, they really are a disgrace to everything it means to be a union, and they look, act and think just like the bosses, and they’re perfectly okay with corruption, and members quite openly say that they are getting kickbacks from the bosses. They’re getting kickbacks from contractors to look the other way on safety and to not organize us. And we have to remember that this leadership represents the theological enslavement of the working class to the ruling class. It represents the history of McCarthyism and the decapitation of working class leadership that actually led to the formation of unions in the beginning, in the first place, and it has its legacy in McCarthyism. So, I mean, if that, if that’s helpful to explain where we’re at.

Seth Rosenberg
It’s important to know that that scandal was kept under wraps until after Davis won re election, and then right afterwards, it came out. And so now they got rid of him, and they put in this, you put in Fiorello knew all about this, and ran with him anyway, right?

John Ferretti
Also, also, what people should know is that Richie Davis got a $500,000 golden parachute from the union, which paid for his health insurance and his wages for up to two years as a bribe to keep him from telling all the secrets of the corruption that they were involved in. So that’s how brazen it is, and that’s what they represent.

Seth Rosenberg
And I think it’s important to note that going back to the larger picture, this has sort of been the way that the transition of President has happened in our union is that basically they’re going to, if the old person is going to retire, retire, they don’t retire, run out their term and then retire. They retire mid term, so they can appoint somebody, then that person is kind of running as a half incumbent. So they’re so they’re basically naming the Constitution and our bylaws order to not have to have new blood actually face a real challenge. And elections happen, and it’s, it’s done a lot of damage.

John Ferretti
Another thing is that it reinforces all of the stereotypes about corrupt, unionism, bureaucratism, and it basically tried confirms every stereotype that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely every pro boss capitalist fairy tale about, Oh, you don’t want to get your hands dirty with having any power. You don’t want to organize yourself and and make them make demands, because then you just going to become corrupt. Because, after all, that’s all we see. And every every anecdote just reinforces that hopelessness and reinforces that cynicism and that skepticism about any leader, and it’s poisonous to the whole goal of building a leadership that actually represents vast majority of workers.

Seth Rosenberg
What we just said, obviously, is very negative and very kind of, you know, depressing. I do want to say that over the last couple of years, there have been, not in our union, but certainly around the country, there have been a number of individual successful struggles. Those have certainly filtered down into consciousness of the co workers, of my co workers.

John Reimann
Give us some examples of that, please.

Seth Rosenberg
I think two that come there, three that come to mind. There’s the Rutgers strike, or the Rutgers struggle. There was, what was it ups, maybe before UAW. And then the, was it the pilots, or some one of the airline workers, some of the airline workers. And what happens is, so these workers are some of these workers, at least, are legally allowed to strike. Some of them struck. Some of them threatened to strike. What happened with each of those is because of that dynamic. You know, the initial offers by management were awful with that. What happened is when the either the strike happened or there was a threat of the strike, you saw a lot of change from management being like, Oh, now we can offer this, even though this was our last best offer, that’s all we can afford. All of a sudden, the numbers start going up, and a lot of those workers got age increased relief from that inflation spike after covid, which we did not get. And so people look at that and they’re like, Wait, why did they get that? And they’re saying that we can’t get this. And so I think that’s a conversation that that you know, that we’ve had with workers, and are continue to have with workers, with respect to when workers actually get together, usually, realistically in this world. What that means is that workers are angry enough and push enough that the union leadership is like, Oh, I got to do something. And then so they get into motion some, and either they actually organize a strike, like UAW, or threaten the strike, I think what Rutgers and ups were threats, and they actually, they are actually able to achieve something. So I think that members are aware of that. I can tell you, my co workers are aware of that, and it’s putting those pieces together. With respect to we stand together. We really have the power and starting to edway. And last thing is that, and to see that own union leadership is an obstacle that not they’re not like leading us.

John Reimann
I would just note by the way, that both the UPS contract and the UAW one was a lot of dissatisfaction the members in in what, you know, the final terms of it, even though they did pass.

Seth Rosenberg
I’m certainly not saying that those contracts are ideal, but what I am saying, and I think it’s backed up by the facts, is that they ended up with significantly better than what the first offers were, there was, was movement, and I can tell you that our dynamic, the last, I don’t know, four or five contracts that just doesn’t exist, right?

John Reimann
What are your thoughts on when the state says, “look, there’s so much money available X amount of dollars available for New York City subways.” And point is, you have the power. Number one, you have to say, “Well, what do you mean? There’s only this much look at all. I mean, New York is a massively wealthy city and state. This has been pointed out by Mamdani, amongst others. We don’t accept that there’s only X amount of dollars available.”

John Ferretti
Well, the other thing though, too, is that we have to expand the pie of those who actually contribute to society. We have a whole sexual society that contributes nothing at all. I mean, Seth shared recently when we did the Iran live stream, Iran world live stream that there are 88 big companies in the United States that paid $0 in federal taxes last year, largely due to the big, beautiful disaster of a bill that Trump passed, but also because of his 2017 tax cuts, right? And these companies are like Tesla, like there’s some of the biggest companies in the world, and they pay very profitable, and they’re very profitable, yet I pay 22% in federal taxes. I’m sure that pays similar amount. 22% federal, 10% state, another 5% city, before I get a dime. 3938 39% of my income is gone, and it’s all subsidized their wars and to subsidize corporate welfare. So we have to change that dynamic. But also just to comment on the on the on the contracts. It’s not even about those contracts being good. It’s not even about the gains, one being victories. It’s about the fact that there were at least demands that workers were militant in making demands that represented their real needs, and they forced bureaucrats to make to make demands that actually represented their needs. So for a transit worker who sees that for the past four contracts, we have no demands at all, and we are afraid to even make demands that represent our real interest. That ignites for them a sense of militancy that see they’re whining, they’re lying to us. We can make demands, and if we did make demands, we’d be in a better position to fight. And so that’s where it captures the imagination of workers who, for the last four contracts, have you know, basically had no expression of their real demands. And so that’s why, although there’s a pervading sense of cynicism that’s a mile wide and an inch deep below that is a boiling hatred of the bosses and an understanding that we’re being gaslit, and that we’re not being we’re not even fighting, that there is no real fight, and that we’re drawing fights that we can win. Just to you know,

John Reimann
We’re going to have to wrap it up, but I want to get back to the point that this is not necessarily a question of a strike. What do you think the response would be if the union said, “we are now going to fight for a $5 an hour wage increase for everybody, not just transit workers. This union is going to lead a fight for that, and we’re going to have a series of public meetings all around the city organized for that, for all workers.”

John Ferretti
I think workers would be enthusiastic about that and would rally to that cause. I think it would mean that the union would have more buy in to actually do Safety Enforcement on the job, to fight for those things. I think that workers imagination could be captured by being in community with other workers and actually talking about how we fight for those things. All of this is not anything that the bureaucracy wants, because they don’t want to raise expectations. But I think that so, and I think that’s why they’re so terrified to do anything like that, even a much less demand. They won’t raise expectations. They won’t even fight for 5% 5% 5% I mean, back in the day Seth could tell you, the demands were 10% a year during the in the lead up to the 2005 strike in 2002 was 1010, 10 in 20 and in fact, the union leader stopped at 8% 8% 8% these were demands, and that’s not that long ago, but yet we’re far, far from that right now.

Seth Rosenberg
I think that with respect to widening, respect to all workers, right? Like trying to connect the class in the city, I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s going to take work with respect to where as a worker’s consciousness is, right now. I think that that would be stronger if that were something that different unions could connect together, it was just one union doing so. Think it’s as powerful, or would really set the stage as much as if a coalition of unions did that. I also think that it really it really has to be couched in this acts, the rich framework, right? Because the I think that is really resonating with workers right now, and Mamdani has been a real positive in that respect, to this idea that you know you’re talking about, like, not sticking to the framework, financial framework that they’re giving. And so think that could have that conversation where you can say, “oh, taxing – there’s all of this society’s resource, all produced, all this produced by the working class and then stolen by the billionaires and hoarded by them. That taxing the rich is actually taking what’s rightfully ours back and going against the whole, you know, this whole bs of myth job creator, you know, these people deserve what they get, stuff, which is exactly the same thing, you know, that was said about the kings and the nobles and the Dukes and all that.” So you can break through that, and once, once that is going then this idea of that we can, we can fight for a wage increase, not just for our union, but stand with others and fight for a wage increase for all workers in the area and in the country and so forth, and hopefully the world, I think, becomes much more viable, right?

John Reimann
I think we wrap it up right now, and we will certainly be following what’s happening with your contract struggle, which comes up in the contract comes up in May.

John Ferretti
May 15 is the expiration date. May 1 is going to be a mass rally at MTA headquarters. It’s a Friday night, at 5pm we’re going to be there with transit workers for just contract, with our own signs, with our own demands, and we’re going to have a follow up meeting to try to organize workers to press these demands in the course of the contract struggle.

Seth Rosenberg
There was one last point I wanted to make: I don’t know if you follow this close enough to know about it, but it’s important with respect to this class struggle and going after billionaires. When Kathy Hochul was out in talks now she gets harangued by people yelling at her, breaking up her press conferences, demanding that she tax the rich. So there is an active struggle on that. I just wanted to throw that out there for people who are not in New York, who may not know that it’s going on, that this a real live issue, and she’s facing a lot of pressure the Democrat as a Democratic base.

John Ferretti
The New York State budget was supposed to be settled on April 1, so we’re currently, like a bit past the date then when it got today’s 19th. So largely that has been tied up with that struggle.

John Reimann
Thanks very much. Seth Rosenberg and John Ferretti from the Local 100 Fight Back Coalition. Thank you for your time. Thanks. We’ll be looking forward to following this important struggle.

John Ferretti
Solidarity with you and all workers.

John Reimann
Oaklandsocialist will be following this important labor struggle as it develops.