I've been following the NYTimes' coverage of the labor disputes boiling over in New York this week. I'm especially interested because I brought my two year-old to NYC on Monday to participate in the 1199 SEIU rally/march for home healthcare workers. Obviously, it would be difficult for the NYTimes to cover the story exactly as I would like it to be covered. So I've waited to post anything about it until I could get a look at what themes pop up in the reporting. The result has been uneven at best. One day the crux of the issue is explained, the next striking workers are cast as troublemakers leaving the city's most vulnerable without care while they demand more money. (A shocking 43% more in the case of the Home Healthcare Aides. On that point, from the stories I've read, it's hard to pick out the fact that the 1199 SEIU's goal is for almost all workers to be making $10 by, at the earliest, 2007.)
Here's the background: Teachers, police, home healthcare and daycare workers are all took the opportunity this week to get some attention paid to their demands. In the case of the home healthcare workers, the issue is a living wage. The workers, who now make $6-$7/hour are looking for $10, which still isn't a living wage in NYC, but is a step up from slave wages. In the case of the daycare workers, who struck today, the issue is a living wage and a contract. They've been without a contract since 2000.
The home healthcare aide story has been covered by Steven Greenhouse, who has stuck to the bare facts, a NYTimes tactic when they don't want their readers to make any connection between the story they have in front of them and any larger issues. On the day the strike began with a huge march and rally though, Mr. Greenhouse spent most of his time on the personal side of the story including a profile of a young woman, paralyzed in a car accident, who faced considerable inconvenience when her home healthcare aide did not show up as scheduled due to the strike. One of the quotes he uses captures the tone of piece:
Ms. Guerra said she had urged her regular aide not to join the strike.
"I told her, 'You can't do this,' '' she said. " 'We're not animals, we're human.' ''
In the same article, Mr. Greenhouse also mentions the moment that the rank and file, in a stirring voice vote, overrode the recommendations of union leadership to postpone the strike allowing the agencies that weren't negotiating time to reconsider.
To Mr. Rivera's visible surprise, the workers - shouting an emphatic "No!" in a voice vote - rejected his recommendation.
"This is democracy in action,'' Mr. Rivera said. At one point, mumbling to himself, he added, "I wasn't expecting this.''
It was a beautiful thing. The attitude of empowerment that swept the workers when Mr. Rivera announced the vote was exhilarating. And despite Mr. Greenhouse's characterization of Mr. Rivera as mumbling in surprise, he handled the decision of the rank and file, which was overwhelming, with grace.
Another aspect of the rallying workers that Mr. Greenhouse leaves out is that they managed to turn out in huge numbers (10,000 - 12,000) on Monday despite lacking central workplaces where they would be able to exchange information and, for a vast majority of them, access to a communication system like the internet, which would provide instant access to information. Some of them were confused as to whether they needed to show up to work since not all agencies were targets of the strike. Some of them left early to go to work. Some of them weren't sure how long the rally would last or what would be expected of them during it. But they showed up and listened and voted and marched without displaying any emotions other than other than determination, solidarity and joy as they experienced the strength that comes with unity of purpose.
I didn't expect Mr. Greenhouse to dwell on the desperate financial straits the home healthcare workers endure. Nor do I expect him to cheerlead for the power that unions are designed to bring to these powerless people as I just did. But I didn't expect him to interview a "victim" of the strike the way he did either. As sad as the situation of the patients is, it's not the story at hand.
The real story of this strike is that it's happening in the healthcare industry and that the issues it raises are linked directly to government funding of care and, therefore, fiscal decisions made in Washington. Mr. Greenhouse gives a better, but not a very complete explanation of those ideas in his story a day earlier:
The executive director of the SEIU New York State Council, Jennifer Cunningham, said the union was intent on obtaining raises to $10 an hour by 2006 for the home-care aides. "They're generally making $7 an hour, and it's extremely hard to live in New York on $7 an hour,'' she said. "Through Medicaid and Medicare, the state and the federal government pay these home-care agencies $17 an hour to deliver care, and it's our contention these agency can pay their workers far more than $7 an hour.''
Ms. Rodat acknowledged that many home-care agencies received reimbursements of $17 an hour, but she said much of that was spent on transportation, training, billing, uniforms and payments to subcontractors.
Her group issued a statement yesterday saying that the raise the union wants could be achieved only through higher government reimbursements.
That's a rock and a hard place isn't it?
Today the story was the daycare workers, who began their strike. This time Leslie Kaufman is the reporter but the tone is the same: the strike is very hard on the people who rely on daycare. Here's the dramatic lead:
Some brought their children to stand beside them at work, behind bank teller windows or supermarket cash registers. Others missed work entirely. Either way, thousands of parents scrambled yesterday as workers at 350 subsidized day care centers began the second major strike in the city this week.
Seven paragraphs later we get to the buried lead:
The day care workers are asking the city for retroactive raises of about 9 percent to match what was given to city workers in 2001. The Bloomberg administration has resisted, saying the city cannot afford to give day care workers, who are employees of city contractors, the same raise as municipal employees.
And then it's back to the profiles of inconvenienced workers, some of whom are welfare-to-work moms. The point - the strike is only hurting other poor moms - couldn't be more clear. It also couldn't be more off target. Cracks are showing up in our healthcare system, our daycare system, our welfare-to-work system and in education and law enforcement. New York City can't pay for any of them and there's no help on the horizon from the debt-hobbled federal government. If it's true, in fact, that BushCo is working to bankrupt the federal government so that events like this come to pass in more cities around the country, shouldn't American's know that? Or at least have the opportunity to consider the impact of enormous federal deficits on America's cities and the people who live in them? That, after all, is the root of the strikes. Apparently the NYTimes doesn't think so.
These are links to all the strike coverage this week:
Greenhouse: City Unions Seek Raises; Week of Protest in Works
Greenhouse:Thousands of Home Aides Begin a Strike
Greenhouse: Home Aides Press a Strike Against 7 Agencies
Greenhouse:Home Aides End Strike; Union Vows More Pressure
Kaufman: Parents Try to Cope as Day Care Workers Strike
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