Union to Commuters: Break Your Stride, For a Moment!

TWU Local 100 reps, along with staffers from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Straphangers, brought awareness about the Republican hit on public transit to commuters at Penn Station on Friday morning. As harried office workers walked briskly through the terminal, many found time to listen to a quick pitch and pick up a flyer. 250,000 come through Penn Station every morning on their way to jobs in New York.

The flyers told riders to visit a website at www.tstc.org/hr7 and email their representatives in Congress to vote against HR 7. That bill has united unions, transit advocates, and many politicians in urban areas – including some Republicans against the biggest attack on public transit in a generation. The bill would remove billions of dollars in public transit funding from the tax currently levied on gasoline purchases, shifting the money from our systems to highway funding. The result: an immediate $1 billion hit on the MTA’s capital program and hard times ahead for millions of New Yorkers.

The cuts would be so devastating that even some Republicans, like Brooklyn’s Bob Turner and Staten Island’s Michael Grimm, are against them. And now news outlets including the Associated Press and Politico are saying that the tide may be turning against HR 7. Politicians try to see which way the wind is blowing, but it’s often grassroots efforts like today’s lobbying at Penn Station that turn the tide. And they only work when our membership shows up mobilized, committed, and ready to make the case to hurried commuters who would rather look the other way until their trains and buses stop running.