The crackdown, spearheaded by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and backed by other Democratic and Republican politicians, is an attempt to punish cab drivers as a warning signal to any other workers in the city who stand up to the bosses' assaults. It is an important labor and social battle involving 44,000 taxi drivers in the largest city in the United States.
The city's wealthy rulers know a successful fight by cab drivers to push back the government's rules changes would boost other labor struggles - Harlem Hospital workers resisting layoffs, workers opposing the city's attempt to use the degrading workfare program to undermine union jobs, and airline workers at Northwest fighting for a decent contract.
The city bosses hope that since many cab drivers are immigrants - hailing from 85 nations, many of them from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean - they can exploit divisions and isolate the drivers from other working people in the city. At a time of sharpening social crisis and polarization, they seek to whip up the venom and hysteria of the middle class by portraying the taxi drivers as greedy and less than human. The label of "taxi terrorists" has a thinly veiled racist edge; many of the drivers of Middle Eastern origin in particular have heard the "terrorist" smear before.
The wealthy would like working people to view taxi drivers as being separate from the labor movement because some of them are "independent contractors." But the stance of the union movement should be to embrace these drivers as fellow workers - whether they own their taxi medallion or lease their cabs - and join them in this battle.
The capitalist media has sought to downplay the impact of the taxi drivers' actions, portraying them as failures to make sure no one else gets any ideas. New York's rulers were astonished when no cabs were seen on the streets May 13 as thousands of cab drivers stood together, dealing a blow to the efforts by capitalist politicians and media to isolate them.
The taxi drivers' militancy is part of the broader working-class resistance that has increased throughout the United States as well as other imperialist countries: from the workers in Denmark who shut down the country, to the Teamsters at Anheuser-Busch breweries who are fighting for a decent contract, to the workers at McDonald's who struck for their dignity.
An injury to one is an injury to all! Support the New York City cab drivers!