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 Abierto Newswire
Newswire Archivo Ocultado
Buscar
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by
Mica Root, Media Mobilizing Project | 09.04.2007
The 48-hour taxi driver strike planned for tomorrow and Thursday is gathering support from other sectors of Philadelphia's service economy. Representatives of several city workers' organizations plan to attend a rally outside the Philadelphia Parking Authority's office at 31st and Market Streets tomorrow at 2pm to show support for the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (TWA) .  "We support taxi workers taking whatever steps they need to take to let people in power know that they don't get to just make decisions that have effects on our lives and effects on our incomes without talking to us. Just like we recognize in our hotel that we're stronger when we recognize our shared interests, we as hotel workers and taxi workers recognize that we have a shared interest and that we are collectively the workforce that makes the city run and makes lots of money for lots of already rich people. They need to treat us with respect, and they need to make sure that we're seeing our fair share of that income. We will demand control of our own lives," said Gary Broderick, a server at the Hyatt Regency and a member of the UNITE-HERE Justice Committee. "As immigrants, all too often our struggles are mislabeled as immigrant issues or multicultural issues, when really they are about one thing: justice for working people. Our members are working people too, and for that reason, we feel it is so important to support our compañer@s in TWA as they mobilize for justice," said Peter Bloom, Director of Juntos, a Latino immigrant organization in South Philadelphia. TWA's 1250 members announced last week that all 1600 Philadelphia medallion taxicabs will be striking. The strike is part of an ongoing campaign to get the non-functional Global Positioning Systems (GPS) out of cabs. Also tomorrow, security guards at Temple University, Jobs with Justice, and an interfaith network of religious leaders will hold a rally to push Temple's administration to give guards five days of paid sick leave. TWA members plan to join the guards' rally to support them and to illustrate that the struggles taxi drivers face and the struggles security officers face are connected. TWA is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic membership-based organization. Since its start in 2005, its members have strived to improve working conditions in what some observers have called "sweatshops on wheels." In his 2005 book "Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City," Biju Mathew quotes New York organizer Bhairavi Desai: "[driving a taxi is] one of the few professions in the world where not only are you not guaranteed an income, but you might end a long twelve-hour workday losing the money you started with." There are taxi drivers organizing for justice and dignity in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; workers from those and other locations around the country and the world—including Philadelphia—formed the International Taxi Workers' Alliance in March of this year. In coordination with TWA of Pennsylvania, drivers in New York and Rome, Italy will also strike this week. Taxi drivers provide an essential service, and many Philadelphians will be inconvenienced on Wednesday and Thursday. But the drivers are striking in an attempt to end the much greater inconveniences GPS systems are causing passengers and drivers alike (such as the 269-mile route from Center City to Cherry Hill the GPS system has suggested, as reported in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer). "We do not want to hurt our customers," said TWA President Ron Blount. "This is about all of us." Other groups agree. To support workers organizing in Philadelphia, come out to: Responder |
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