Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 11:15:06 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-G: (fwd) Organizing the impossible-to-organize


More on the New York taxi-drivers.

Cheers,

Hugh
__________________________


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 09:47:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew J. English <aenglish-AT-CRL.COM>

>From Newsday, May 20, 1998

These Hacks Ain't Yellow

Ellis Henican

The conventional wisdom looked at Biju Mathew and laughed.

New York taxi drivers, the conventional wisdom said, will never get
organized.

Too many languages. Too many ethnic groups. Too many
independent-minded personalities to agree on anything. Too many recent
immigrants, more concerned about earning a dollar than joining anybody's
political cause. Even their own.

That's what the conventional wisdom always said.

So how come 90-plus percent of city taxi drivers stayed home last
Wednesday? And how come the mayor and the titans of the taxi trade were
both in such a lather yesterday, trying to maneuver through conflicting
signals about a second taxi protest scheduled for tomorrow?

"Everybody was surprised by what happened on the 13th, everybody but
us," Biju Mathew was saying at midday. "We were not surprised at all. We
knew we had a big strike on our hands. We know how to communicate with
the drivers. We know what is on their minds."

And now, it's time time to ask the follow-ups: Will last week's
success carry over to this week? Or will taxi-driver unity disappear as
quickly as it came?

Biju Mathew smiles and shakes his head.

A soft-spoken, 35-year-old Ph.D from Hyderabad in southern India,
Mathew has never driven a taxi, in New York or anywhere. His eyesight is
too weak to pass the test. But not his organizing skill. Over the past
two years, he and his colleagues in a ragtag group now known as the New
York Taxi Workers Alliance were quietly organizing the
impossible-to-organize.

With staff director Bhairavi Desai, Mathew helped to put together
this multi-ethnic group of "lease drivers," the ones who don't own their
own $300,000 medallions but rent their cabs for $100 to $115 per 12-hour
shift. They are the workhorses of the taxi business, the ones with the
very least to lose.

"In the taxi industry, the old formula for organizing will not work;
the hierarchical leadership and all of that," said Mathew, who has no
formal title with the group but was (say others, not he) the key
strategist behind last week's success.  "We have very simple notions of
democracy around here."

Constant two-way communication is the key. In 24 hours, a message
can reach every taxi driver in New York.

"The restaurants are enormously important," he said, offering a
rare, inside glimpse at street-level taxi politics in New York. "The CB
channels. The shift-change locations. Houston Street between Broadway
and Lafayette between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. One thousand to 2,000
cabs will show up there. Each one of those people is tied to other
informal networks."

And that's not all.

"Meetings late at night work very, very well," he said. "It's a fact
of the industry that, at 1 or 1:30 or 2 in the morning, business really
slacks off. Drivers are willing to say, `If I stay on the road, I'll
only make another 12 or 15 dollars. So OK, I'll go to the meeting.'"

As he spoke, Mathew was sitting on the 10th floor of an old
garment-center building on West 27th Street, where the Taxi Alliance has
a phone, a fax machine and a desk. In the world of labor organizing, he
does not quite look the part in his brown sandals, beard and
loose-fitting kurta shirt. His doctorate, he said, comes from the
University of Pittsburgh. He earns his living as an assistant professor
of information systems at Rider College in New Jersey. His taxi
organizing is strictly volunteer.

But wait!

New developments were now unfolding downtown.

Tomorrow's planned protest, a taxi procession from Astoria to City
Hall, was suddenly called off. That event was being organized not by the
Taxi Workers Alliance  -  but by the United Yellow Cab Drivers
Association, which mainly represents drivers who own their own
medallions. The Taxi Alliance was in a support role this time, urging
its people to join the other group's procession  -  or at least stay
home again.

Under heavy pressure from Rudy Giuliani, the owner-driver group
blinked.

So was the stay-at-home call still on, Mathew was asked? Not for
now, he said. Come what may from City Hall, he promised, his group will
be prepared.

The medallion owners may get jittery, he said, each time the mayor
roars. But not the lease drivers.

"The lease drivers really do have nothing to lose here," said this
organizer of the impossible-to-organize. "Our people have no fear any
more. We have a right to protest. That's the law. No one, not even the
mayor, can take that away."

Copyright 1998, Newsday Inc.

These Hacks Ain't Yellow., 05-20-1998, pp A07.




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