Solidarity with the 3,500 striking Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers, whose wages have not gone up in years and are justly demanding substantial wage increases and better healthcare terms. The MTA has forced their workforce to work for three years without a contract and without any wage increase. This is absolutely shameful. Every single worker deserves a dignified, stable and secure life.
While LIRR workers struggle to make ends meet with an ever-rising cost of living, Janno Lieber, chair of the MTA, whose salary is upwards of $400,000 per year, stated, “I strongly believe that the LIRR is a great place to have a job. We have great health benefits, great retirement benefits, and pensions.” From his point of view, the MTA is a fantastic place to work! It’s crucial for the working class to not fall for the manipulations of the bosses. The workers deserve every penny that they demand.
In a commonly used tactic to divide the workforce, the MTA proposed a contract that would require new employees to make higher contributions to their healthcare benefits than current union members. The rejection of this deal by the workers is an excellent example of the importance of worker solidarity and organization. LIRR workers understand that any attack on any part of the workforce is an attack on the workforce as a whole.
It’s crucial to extend this logic to the entirety of the working class: an attack on LIRR workers is an attack on the working class as a whole, and conversely, any victory won by the LIRR workers will be a victory for all workers.
Labor unions need to build national solidarity and support the railroad workers’ strike. We need working class solidarity to combat the slander coming from the corporate media and NY Governor Kathy Hochul herself, which tries to portray the striking workers as troublemakers who are creating chaos for commuting workers.
The truth is that the railroad workers are in the same boat as every other worker: the bosses will pay as little as they can get away with to make as much profit as possible. This is the case even when wages come largely from state funding, since in order to pay those wages, taxes must be collected, and the millionaires and billionaires are categorically opposed to having their stratospheric wealth taxed. This is why Hochul’s fearmongering about the strike, stating that the deal that the unions are demanding would require fare raises is a blatant lie. Lieber has similarly stated his concern about economically burdening Long Islanders with fare and tax hikes. These statements are an attempt to fearmonger and divert from the obvious solution: fully funding MTA by taxing the rich.
Capitalism is a zero-sum game. Whether it’s through wages or through taxes, every penny that goes to the working class is a penny lost to the millionaires and billionaires, who make their wealth by exploiting workers. This is why the LIRR workers’ fight is every workers’ fight. The workers create the wealth; the rich appropriate it.
Hochul’s comments prove that we cannot rely on politicians who belong to either of the corporate parties. The Democratic Party is just as much a party of the billionaires as the Republican Party, and it will always fight against workers’ movements demanding better conditions. Their role is to protect the interests of the rich, even when that means occasionally taking the side of workers in a performative manner, but this will always have the purpose of limiting the achievements of the struggle and lead it to a dead end. They will never allow the balance of forces to tip to the side of the workers.
Mayor Mamdani’s refusal to take a stand for the workers and his failure to publicly condemn Hochul’s strike-breaking tactics are a clear demonstration of this. It is the job of a socialist representative to fight unambiguously for the interests of workers, not stand on the sidelines as Mamdani is doing, saying he doesn’t want to “interfere.” But when Democratic and Republican politicians, like Hochul, demonize striking workers and even take strike-breaking measures, they are “interfering” blatantly in support of the bosses. There is no neutral position, and as a socialist representative, I absolutely “interfered” and fought alongside the workers and against the bosses, including with striking teachers, carpenters, nurses, and Boeing workers in the Seattle area. And no socialist representative should endorse our class enemies, as Mamdani has, by shamefully endorsing strikebreaker Hochul.
The movement to tax the rich will need the kind of independent working-class leadership provided by my socialist Seattle City Council office for a decade. By using my office to fight big business and the Democratic Party, I was able to help lead victories like the nation’s highest minimum wage, unprecedented renters’ rights, free abortion in Seattle, and the Amazon Tax, which funds hundreds of millions of dollars annually for affordable housing by taxing the wealthiest businesses. We won these through class struggle methods: organizing mass working class movements to put up a relentless fight against the bosses and their Democratic Party spokespeople.
We need to join each of our individual fights to the struggle for a socialist world in which the major corporations are democratically owned and controlled by the workers.
Kshama Sawant is a revolutionary socialist running for the U.S. Congress as an independent. Her campaign is fighting for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich, for an end to the genocide in Gaza and all military aid to Israel, to shut down ICE and the detention centers, to stop the data centers and AI layoffs, and for national rent control.
Kshama is a founding member of Workers Strike Back, a nationwide organization of working people fighting against the billionaires and their political servants. Kshama was on the Seattle City Council for a decade, and used her office to lead mass movements to win historic victories like the nation’s highest minimum wage and the Amazon Tax on wealthy corporations to fund affordable housing.