The People of New York City People of NYC

From the Fiscal Crisis of 1975 to the Great Recession of 2008, it seems like those at the bottom were even further away from the wealthy. In both events, the people of New York City play a major part.  As a result of New York City’s Fiscal Crisis, the participation of and involvement made by labor unions in government processes increased. Similarly, as a result of the Recession, the 99% woke up to the income inequality reality, and increased their participation against the 1% in Occupy Wall Street. Lastly, New Yorkers also fight to raise the minimum wage as they participate in the Fight for $15 protests.

 Workers of New York City Unite!

New York historically maintains a union culture unlike any other city in the United States. A union is a group of people who share the same profession that is formed to protect their rights and interests. New York, a city, known for trying to attain the American Dream, should also be known for its economic inequality. We have had strikes from teachers to transit workers to sanitation. All interested in protecting the rights of their workers.

In the current times that not only NY but that the country is facing, unions offer a stable form of income to all of the workers along with benefits such as health insurance and pensions. We are in a time where American companies have never made as much money, but some of our workers are still just above the poverty line. The US economy has become dependent on the quarterly money made so companies try to cut costs wherever they can whether it be by paying workers less, laying off workers, or making less capital investments. We have entered the “shareholder” mentality, wanting to make more money quarterly for those who own stock in a company rather than ensuring workers succeed as well.

One of these groups that has constantly suffered are the public workers of NYC. They have also continued to suffer due to the Taylor Law. This law prevents public workers from striking as they work for the government. The law allows the governor to appoint a board to try to resolve contract disputes with civil workers and any work stopped is punishable by a fine.

Enter NYC Teachers

 A key group to unionize were the New York City teachers. In 1968, under the leadership of Al Shanker, teachers organized for a series of strikes after 18 white teachers had been fired from a newly made district composed mainly of a black population. This led to the city’s schools being shut down for 36 days after. This ended the idea that schools could be controlled by the surrounding communities.

The strength gained by unionsThe strength gained by unions would be seen when the UFT was given collective bargaining power and would later go on to involve other school related professions under their name such as psychologists, nurses, guidance counselors, secretaries, and later child care workers. Their strength was in numbers and allowed them to get many of the things that they wanted such as health insurance along with salaries proportioned with the current economic times.

Sanitation and Transit

Sanitation and Transit workers were another profession that would unionize and find benefits. Sanitation was an integral part of the city, taking much of the dirt that was present on the streets away. The Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association played a great role in also attaining benefits for their workers. With separate strikes in 1968, 1975, and 1981, sanitation workers have had to constantly fight the idea of the constant equality that many of us seek. With sanitation on the strike, garbage would pile up for weeks causing NYC to looks dirtier. The USA union would also go one and fight for many of these workers to go on and receive higher wages but also pensions and health insurance.

Transit workers also had to fight to be able to get decent wages along with benefits. Transit workers exercised their power by also organizing their own strikes in 1966, 1988, and 2005. Without Transit workers, the city’s public transportation systems were forced to a halt, bringing attention to the cause of the transit workers. Other times with incidences such as the strike of 2005, the city lost huge amounts of money by not having transportation during one of the busiest weeks of the year. The TWU Local 100 was also effective in 1981 by affecting private companies, with around 20% of the cities workers being out during their strike period.

As we can see strikes and unions have often provided a voice for groups of workers in New York and have allowed them to get the pay that they deserve as well as to receive benefits that are needed. The escalating wealth gap in New York has been primarily due to the lack of unions in present day as well. Many of those supporting the “Fight for 15” movement are also underrepresented by not having a union. The lack of unions for workers in the service industry such as fast food workers has left them without a voice and often receiving low pay. This shift away from union culture and the implementation of neoliberal economic policies has resulted in a huge wealth disparity in this great city.

With this image we can see that NY has maintained one of the highest percentages of union membership across the states. This is partially due to the high income inequality that is also present in New York, as the low wage earners are often exploited by employers.

Manhattan took center stage for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which begun September 2011 in Zuccotti Park located near the New York City Federal Reserve Bank, the New York Stock Exchange, and not too far from the Goldman Sachs headquarters in downtown Manhattan.

Fellow New Yorkers proudly chant “We are the 99%”, the slogan for the Occupy Wall Street movement (#OWS) against social and economic inequality directed at New York City’s financial district. In unison, the 99% share one goal, to put economic inequality back in the agenda. The demands of protestors are to “take the bull by the horn”, the bull being Wall Street itself.

The signs protestors carried demonstrated the clear grievances that resulted in their choices to occupy Wall Street.

Major Grievances of the 99%:

The core grievance is the widening gap in income that divides those with higher income, the rich, and those with lower income, the poor. The rich possess wealth and power, while the poor, remain powerless. Recent studies blame the recession for this, where while the poor were hit most, the rich recovered and then got even more wealthier. The division only widened from here and the problem that remains is that the wealthy are still dominating NYC.

It is important to note that the demographics for those who support Occupy indicate that in this protest against the 1%, a majority of the supporters are all a part of the 99%. With 46.5% having incomes below $25,000, 23.3% with incomes between $25,000 to $49,999, and 30.1% with incomes of $50,000 or over.

At the beginning of the protests, Charles M. Blow contended in the New York Times, that the protestors are creating a “clear legacy: ingraining in the national conscience the idea that our extreme levels of inequality are politically untenable and morally unacceptable, and that eventually the 99 percent will demand better.” After opening their eyes to the imbalance that exists in the current hierarchal economy, where the favoritism for the wealthy is overtly demonstrated, and after recognizing that this is the precise cause for the exacerbating income gap between the rich and the poor, the Occupy protestors created the General Assembly, where the movement’s call to occupy did exactly that; it demanded better.

THE MOVEMENT’S CALL TO OCCUPY:

The Occupy Movement in NYC becomes official after being accepted by the NYC General Assembly.

Economic Inequality, the driving force behind the NYC Occupy Movement

The heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement is powerfully motivated by the subject and intensity of economic inequality. The movement’s call to occupy affirms this. Of most interest are the following grievances:

“They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continued to produce.”

“The have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.”

“They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions”

“They continually appoint bankers to the top economic posts, ensuring that the government’s economic policy reflects the interests of the plutocracy and not those of the people.”

“They” references the “economic and political elites” who are to blame for the growing wealth disparity. The issue that the movement calls to major attention are the actions of the corporatocracy, a group consisting of wealthy business owners and the government officials that support them. This group, understood synonymously in the source material with the 1%, is blamed for creating the economic circumstances necessary for wealth disparity to occur, providing at least part of the need for a large public demonstration such as Occupy to occur. The New York City General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street signs off “We have been complicit with our consumption, our money, our silence, until now.”

Hello World, 

We are fed up with the huge disparity of wealth caused by the present system.

Sincerely, The 99%

The NUMBERS Support the #OWS Rhetoric

The motivating conversation the Occupy protestors are bringing to public attention is the underlying hierarchy of income that allocates the richer 1 percent on top, and the remaining 90 percent on the bottom. The 2011 statistics certainly do not lie; they fittingly support the rhetoric on the protest signs, and the call to occupy. The current economic structure of New York City is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest. The infographic above perfectly presents the two extremes New York City faces, extreme wealth, and extreme poverty, two contrasting sides of the same coin.

What’s more is that the wealth of 56 of NYC’s richest billionaires ($183.5 billion) dwarfs the collective earnings of 1.5 million low-income New Yorkers ($6.8 billion). While the net worth of these billionaires’ skyrocket, the low-income New Yorkers have a net worth close to zero, and for some it is even negative, requiring the comparison to be dependent on their income. The richest New Yorker, Mayor Bloomberg’s net worth equals $20 billion, equaling that of 342,000 average families whose yearly income averages $51,116.

Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger comments “Even in the horrid economy, the wealthy still have astounding sums of money, reinforcing the reality that they have created a ‘heads we win, tails you lose economy.’ The State and City have implemented public policies – tax cuts and corporate welfare for the mega rich combined with fee hikes and service cuts for the middle class and the impoverished – that are directly responsible for this soaring inequality of wealth. Soon enough, the bottom 99% will become an endangered species in NYC, while the wealthy continue to flourish. This is one of the major reasons to Occupy Zuccotti Park, to fight against tax breaks handed to the wealthy elites, sparking the “Human Need Over Corporate Greed” protest signs.

Wealth inequality, a phenomenon that is both quantitatively measured and openly visible in NYC today is what the Occupy protestors make an effort to stand against. Occupy Wall Street embodies the frustration and dissatisfaction of the vast majority of American citizens, 99% of them to be exact, with how income disparity only negatively affects them.

Fight for $15

The Fight for $15 movement began right here in New York City. Although it began with just a few fast food workers, the movement has now expanded to include several other underpaid workers such as child care teachers, retail workers, airport workers, home health workers and even adjunct professors. As many corporations such as McDonald’s make billions in revenue each year, their employees make less than the living minimum wage and struggle to live. Many of these workers also strive to create unions to be able to get that collective bargaining power that is so essential to deal with these matters.

Due to their low wages, many of them struggle to make ends meet. As a result, many of these low wage earners live on food stamps. This means that as these multinational companies are making billions of dollars each year, their workers end up being a detriment to fellow tax payers by requiring more and more of these social services.

This economic inequality is nothing new to our city. Susan Berfield from Bloomberg states, “The 1 percent account for almost 40 percent of the country’s wealth. The 0.1 percent account for more than 10 percent all by themselves.” While fast food CEO’s are some of the highest paid executives in the nation, fast food workers are the lowest paid. This is precisely what influenced the movement to demand this social change.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the minimum wage back in 1933, it was always meant to go along with what the living wage would be. FDR even went as far as stating, “it seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country,” in his Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act. If we take FDR’s words to heart, it is very clear that many businesses in NYC should be deprived of this right.

The chart above shows how low wage industries, many of those being fast food corporations of the likes of McDonald’s, have undergone a wage decrease. This is what has led to the great rise of these low wage workers striking against big corporations. Laurie Kulikowski states “In 2014, Chipotle employees earned a median salary of $19,000 — the lowest median of the top 25 companies ranked on Glassdoor’s list — while Steve Ells earned $28.9 million.” This quote displays the core message that the Fight for $15 movement is trying to get across—CEO’s are taking in millions as the bottom tier workers are barely making enough to live on. 

“When she started working, she was paid $7.25 an hour. She was recently promoted to a manager and saw her pay go up to $8 an hour, then to $8.15 an hour. Yet still, she says, it’s not enough to make ends meet. She is still $400 short at the end of the month.”- The Guardian

As we can see, the Fight for $15 protests are fighting for equality and the ability to be able to live a normal life without having to worry about how money shortages and how to pay bills at the end of the month. Fight for $15 protestors are not fighting for something that they want, they are fighting for something that they deserve.

Scroll through the graph above to see what the appropriately deserving and necessary living wage should look like for people living in the New York City-New Jersey Metro area.

Thankfully, New York State has decided to enact the much sought after $15 minimum wage. This new minimum wage is set to come in before the end of 2018 for the city of New York. It will definitely be a great boost to low wage earners across the city since they will now be able to make a decent living and live a bit more comfortably than what they were used to. Many hope that with the $15 minimum wage that they may be able to finally get off of food stamps. Hopefully, we’ll get to see less of a struggle for low wage earners residing in NYC.

Read on: From Ashes to Luxury Living