Re: transit villages; reply to Boone

[Martha Bianco, H-Urban Co-Moderator]

H-Urban Co-moderator, Wendy Plotkin, wrote:

> Have you looked at the attitudes of the transit workers unions in
> Portland, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, and other other cities
> mentioned (if there were unions in those cities)?  Where were the
> transit union's loyalties -- with the higher fares that would
> strengthen the streetcar companies' operating budgets, or the lower
> fares that would indicate the unions' solidarity with other labor
> unions?

I think that transit unions' loyalties depended on the degree of support
they had from the city politic as a whole.  For instance, in Portland,
there was not a high degree of working class activism or support from the
city government or the public in general.  This lack of solidarity
contributed to the transit workers in Portland actually supporting fare
increases because those would lead to wage increases.

In other cities, where there was a stronger and more pervasive class
consciousness and where transit was altogether more politicized, there
tended to be a consensus among transit workers that increasing fares
would mean increasing the cost of living for all workers.  Thus, those
unions (NY, California, for example) were against fare increases.  They
expected their wage increases to come from some source other than the
pockets of other workers.

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Martha Bianco
Lewis & Clark
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