I was at the gym discussing my less than perfect posture this morning with Kyle Davis, a master trainer at 24 Hour Fitness in Seattle.

I told Kyle that my shoulders were killing me after doing the rotator cuff exercises that he’d shown me to help stand me up straighter. He just laughed and called my pain, “therapeutic suffering.” Suffering that was required to get me to a better place.

Immediately I knew that I’d have to steal his phrase for the workplace. Because it explains so much about what we all need to know to survive today’s turbulent economy.

Call me a tad too cynical, but the workplace has two kinds of suffering right now. Therapeutic and Non-Therapeutic suffering. Sure I’ve heard that there are happy people out there, but after over 50,000 emails from readers, I can count them on one hand. Then again, before I changed the name of my weekly column to Workplace911 it was called Working Wounded.

Back to therapeutic suffering, when a boss hassles you to make a presentation perfect, that would qualify as therapeutic, the goal is to make you better. When a boss yells at you for the sake of yelling, as had happened to a friend of mine earlier last week, well that’s the non-therapeutic version. Or abuse, short sightedness or just bad management.

The key is to take the time to sort out the therapy level in whatever pain you’re experiencing. Give the challenging economy, most of us aren’t in a position to jump ship at our first non-therapeutic treatment. But if the suffering becomes too non-therapeutic, we can always get Human Resources, our Union or other loyalists in the company to support our cause.

The interesting part. Even if you can’t change the behavior or your job, just knowing that you’re being treated unfairly just might be able to help you to keep your cool and to maintain your perspective.

Use the concept of therapeutic suffering at work and you just might find yourself improving your posture too.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Over the past several weeks, the images emerging from the Middle East and North Africa have shocked and awed Western audiences, who had never seen, or bothered to notice, the massive potential of people power to challenge the rule of ossified dictators.

But the protest movements across the region have also shed light on less glorious struggles that pervade stratified Arab societies. If the young protesters represent the rise of civil society forces, the imported migrant laborers caught in the crossfire reflect the often-hidden economic and ethnic dimensions to the region’s power struggles.

On the besieged borders of Libya and in the ghettoized neighborhoods of Bahrain, migrants have found themselves in the peculiar position of being refugees from countries that were always alien to them. As the fighting escalated in Libya last week, the aid organization BRAC reported on migrants desperate to flee the country:

Nearly 70,000 Bangladeshi nationals were residing in Libya as migrant workers when violence erupted last month. As the conflict intensified, thousands fled to neighboring countries, where they face congested borders and overcrowded refugee camps and airports. Thus far, only 20,000 migrants have been able to return to Bangladesh – most of them heavily in debt and with no ready means of earning a living.

After leaving his workplace in the western Libyan town of Zawiyah, 28 year-old Bangladeshi migrant steelworker Mohammed Nienn joined mounting crowds at the Tunisian border at a displaced persons camp known as Choucha. Having languished for over a week in hopes of catching a flight out, he told the UN news service:

”My family tells me to get home as quickly as possible… But it’s not as simple as that. There are so many Bangladeshis here. The wait to go to the airport is quite long.”

Mohamed, a Somali from Mogadishu, spoke to the constant state of dispossession that follows refugees who go from one warzone to the next:

Every day I watch people board buses to the airport….But I’m not envious; their situation is just very different to mine. Even if I was offered the chance to go back to Somalia, I wouldn’t want to anyway. I’m just waiting to find out where I will end up.

Thousands of Bangladeshi migrant workers who recently crossed into Tunisia from Libya walk to a United Nations displacement camp March 04, 2011 in Ras Jdir, Tunisia. Tens of thousands of guest workers from Egypt, Tunisia, Bangladesh and other countries are fleeing to the border of Tunisia to escape the violence. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

International authorities counted some 17,000 refugees at Choucha, “10,000 from Bangladesh and the remaining 7,000 mostly from sub-Saharan African countries.” Repatriation efforts have varied widely, with some countries coordinating efforts to bring nationals home, while others have no home to return to—as in the case of Somalis and Palestinians who settled in Libya when it was relatively safe.

The plight of migrants is just one facet of the humanitarian crisis, but they embody the challenges to advancing a revolution in the face of social polarization and cultural dissonance. Even within Choucha, Bangladeshi and African refugees began to self-segregate as different groups struggled to make the most of tight supplies and food rations.

In Bahrain, where protests have been viciously crushed by government and Saudi forces, the country’s oil wealth is filtered along sectarian and class lines.. At the base of the stratified social structure are Bangladeshi immigrants, working in low-wage sectors like construction. According to Mother Jones, the tiny country is tightly parceled: “Sunni Muslims, westerners, Shiite Muslims, and South Asian migrant workers (who are not citizens but constitute almost half of Bahrain’s population) generally live in separate neighborhoods.”

Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable in the current political turbulence. Indeed,  long before the protests the human rights situation for migrants in Bahrain was already dire, in some ways anticipating the terror  the monarch has now unleashed on its own citizenry.

For all the promise of democratic change washing over many Arab countries, many underlying social rifts have ruptured–a telling reminder that even a rebellion from the “right side of history” can betray regressive views that often stew under the grip of dictatorship.

Black Africans in Libya (as opposed to ethnic Arabs), who have long suffered unequal treatment as migrants, have reportedly been brutally targeted on the suspicion that they are foreign mercenaries hired by Gaddafi to suppress protests.

Black Agenda Report commentator Glen Ford rounded up reports on racial violence in Libya, and drew a sobering reflection on the emergent “Arab re-awakening”:

In the turmoil, what is also re-awakened – or never really dormant – is a “problematic” form of anti-black racism that appears, at least in some parts of the North African Maghreb, endemic and woven into the fabric of Arab nationalism.

The (re)emergence of Arab nationalism nevertheless represents a catastrophe for U.S. imperialism, which abhors all nationalisms except its own as it seeks to bend every national aspiration to the will of capital and its war machinery. However, the racism that is clearly manifest in Libya’s current dynamic is also a huge impediment to pan-African solidarity, inviting new waves of imperial mischief on the continent. On that score, we should have no illusions.

In reality, the migrants who take the dirtiest jobs in these oil-rich nations have a lot in common with the revolutionaries risking everything for emancipation. As Mohamed the Somali refugee said, they’re all waiting to find out where they will end up. A parallel form of dislocation stirred native-born Bahrainis and Libyans to rise up and reclaim their country from tyranny.

The rebellions don’t merely call for regime change or constitutional reform; people seek the sovereignty and dignity that have long been denied to them. Though frequently ignored in nationalist political clashes, migrants share in this struggle too, whether or not they see themselves as part of the civil conflict. They’re pitted against the dictatorship of global capital that subsumed their repressive host countries. Both migrants and citizens alike have endured wholesale disenfranchisement—the disempowerment that was first expressed by the defining act of protest that touched off the “Arab spring”: the self-annihilation of a desperate young worker in Tunis.

Some migrants are raising their voices as stakeholders in political conflicts as well. A group of Filipino migrant workers with the advocacy group Migrante-Middle Eas has denounced the air-strikes on Libya as “done in bad faith just to pursue their own self-serving geopolitical and economic agenda in Libya and the entire Middle East and North African region.”

Refugees from America’s former colony should know: this latest tide of displacement is just more proof that in an age of fluid borders and global capital, real revolution is anchored in the dignity of all workers, wherever they’ve come from, and wherever they’re going.

About the Author: Michelle Chen’s work has appeared in AirAmerica, Extra!, Colorlines and Alternet, along with her self-published zine, cain. She is a regular contributor to In These Times’ workers’ rights blog, Working In These Times, and is a member of the In These Times Board of Editors. She also blogs at Colorlines.com. She can be reached at michellechen @ inthesetimes.com.

This blog originally appeared In These Times on March 21, 2011. Reprinted with Permission.

I’ve been following this from a far–not because I like the sport (I don’t)–but it is a fight that is a tough one for the workers.

At the brink of an all-out labor war Thursday, the NFL players union weighed an 11th hour-proposal by National Football League owners designed to keep the two sides at the bargaining table. The sides were considering extending a midnight deadline for the expiration of the current collective-bargaining agreement.

At stake was the future of the world’s most successful professional-sports league, a $9 billion annual juggernaut now threatened by the sort of deep-seeded labor strife that has caused months-long work stoppages and billions of dollars in losses for professional baseball, hockey and basketball in the U.S.

During a 10th day of talks mediated by George Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services, the two sides discussed extending the current CBA, a move that would prevent what could become a lengthy and ugly litigation. If the talks break down, the National Football League Players Association is expected to to decertify their union, a move that opens up the door for the players to file an antitrust suit against the owners if a lockout ensues.

It has always been even harder for sports figures compared to other workers (harder than it is for public workers too!) to generate a lot of sympathy among the public for a strike–but the truth is this a battle between big corporations and their workers. But, football players are slightly different:

The public tends to be sympathetic to the players. Most fans are well aware that football players — unlike many other well-paid athletes — put their health and safety at risk every time they step on the field. They know that NFL careers are short. That the contracts are, for the most part, not guaranteed. If the public chooses sides, it will likely be with the players.

As Newswise reports, based on employee engagement research by Florida State University business school professor Wayne Hochwarter,

recession-based uncertainty has encouraged many business leaders to pursue self-serving behaviors at the expense of those that are considered mutually beneficial or supportive of organizational goals.

This plays out in behaviors that Hochwarter’s team classified using the biblical Seven Deadly Sins as a framework.  While the percentages attached to each of those “behavioral sins,” based on feedback from more than 700 mid-level workers, is interesting, what appears further down in Newswise’s article caught my attention more from a productive workplace standpoint: FSU found that employees with leaders who committed any of these “sins” said they cut back on their contributions by 40%.  Notably, they were also:

• 66% less likely to make creative suggestions, and
• 75% more likely to pursue other job opportunities.

Hochwarter’s findings tell me that workplace qualities that some leaders might consider as soft (or at least far down on the totem pole of what they need to worry about day to day), such as trust, respect, and fairness, are not just “nice to do’s” – they have a real impact on product/service delivery and quality, and company spending on recruiting and retraining.

This is one of the reasons that Winning Workplaces revised our Top Small Company Workplaces award application for 2011 to take a more in-depth look at how things like rewards/recognition and employee leadership development strategies impact business results.  Year after year of our small workplace award program, we see that happier, more highly engaged employees lead to better outcomes, while the opposite lead to a path of lower profitability and competitiveness in the marketplace.

This post is cross-posted on the Winning Workplaces Blog.

About The Author: Mark Harbeke is Director of Content Development for Winning Workplace. He helps write and edit Winning Workplaces’ e-newsletter, IDEAS, and provides graphic design and marketing support. Mark holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Drake University.

Department of Labor news releases rarely get the attention they so rightly deserve. But I’m a fan of giving credit where credit is due, so when Assistant Secretary Joseph Main issued this statement, I perked up.

After an investigation by Federal officials, a mine operated by Massey (think Upper Big Branch explosion) was cited for 29 violations in its Tiller No. 1 Mine. The violations ranged from hazardous roof conditions to inadequate ventilation to, wait for it….

Non-permissible electrical equipment with the potential to explode methane gas.

Section 104(d)(1) of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act describes a significant and substantial violation as being “of such nature as could significantly and substantially contribute to the cause and effect of a coal or other mine safety or health hazard.” A violation of this provision essentially means there is a reasonable likelihood that the hazard will result in serious injury or illness. The problem is not just the standard, but in the requisite number of violations that meet the standard to establish a pattern.

Judge David Barbour, who issued an oral ruling (written decision to come) on the matter, found that although he believed all 29 violations had occurred, only 19 of the violations amounted to significant and substantial, 6 less than the 25 needed to establish a pattern. Don’t bother asking if that’s a typo, 25 “significant and substantial” violations are necessary in order to establish a pattern. Establishing a pattern means that any significant and substantial violation found within 90 days thereafter automatically triggers a withdrawal order until the mine has a clean inspection with no S&S violations. In short, establishing a pattern would immensely help those who work in such unsafe conditions by forcing mine operators to clean up or face losing money every day.

“No mine has ever been successfully placed into pattern of violations status.” This is perhaps the most profound statement made with regards to the matter. In 2006, the American public endured the Sago Mine explosion and watched as a single miner emerged with his life. And in April of this year the Upper Big Branch mine exploded, killing 29 coal miners.

Mining is undoubtedly one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and we continually disrespect those who risk their lives for our energy by refusing to recognize and fix a broken system of oversight. Employees of these mines should be disgusted, if they aren’t too busy being frightened. The Federal Mine and Health Safety Act is designed to provide regulations and oversight into one of the most hazardous industries known to man. It was not designed to protect the companies who owned the mines, but the average worker who spent a full 8-10 hours in a black hole.

A message needs to be sent to the mine industry: we will no longer tolerate such blatant disregard for workers. We may not be able to bring mining from one of the most dangerous jobs in the world to the safest job in the world, but surely we can help those facing such conditions. And we can do that by easing the restrictions on establishing patterns of violations. Doing so would allow regulators to shut mines down when they see violations deemed S&S, and force mine operators to think about safety more than once every explosion.

About The Author: Ravi Bakhru is a third year law student at George Washington University. He currently works as an intern for Workplace Fairness, and has an interest in pursuing employee rights law in the future. To get in touch with Ravi, you can email him at Ravi.Bakhru@gmail.com.

In the 1930s, when the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed, these two laws offered labor protections to workers nationwide – with the exception of two large segments of the work population: domestic workers and agricultural workers. These groups were excluded in the interests of political expediency since a large proportion of both groups were comprised of blacks and women, two populations that weren’t generally afforded full rights in many public and social arenas at the time.

With the 33-28 vote passage of the New York State Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the Senate, New York is likely to become the first state in the union to remedy that. The Bill is not yet final law – first, the Senate bill needs to be reconciled with the bill passed by the state Assembly and then Governor Patterson must sign it.

Bill Number S2311D would “… amend the labor law, the executive law and the workers’ compensation law, in relation to establishing regulations regarding employment of domestic workers including hours of labor, wages and employment contracts.” The purpose of the bill is stated as being to: “… provide domestic workers with a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights which would set out the responsibilities of employers and employees as well as rules for paid holidays, paid vacations and standard overtime.”

It’s estimated that there are about 200,00 domestic workers in New York, 93% of which are women and 95% of which are people of color. Because the Bill covers all domestic workers – both legal and illegal – it’s been fairly controversial. Opponents decry the increase in regulation, which some say will result in fewer jobs. Many opponents also bridle against any protection for illegal workers, feeling that offers a legitimacy. Proponents say that it will go a long way to regulating an industry that has no standards or oversight and afford basic worker rights to a largely ignored worker population. Many of those in favor of the bill also think that shedding light on some of unregulated business segments which have historically been magnets for undocumented workers will be an important step in coming to grips with the hiring of illegal workers.

In a column in the New York Daily News, Albor Ruiz notes the irony that although we trust these domestic workers with our children, our elderly parents and our homes, they are among the most exploited of society’s laborers. He cites a study by Domestic Workers United and DataCenter, which found that, “…26% of domestic workers make less than the poverty line or the minimum wage rate. Also, 33% say they have been abused verbally or physically, and half report working overtime but not being paid for it. Health insurance from their employer is a rare luxury – only 10% get it.”

From our viewpoint, we think all employers have the responsibility to provide a fair and safe workplace for all employees, regardless of the work population involved – legal, illegal, here in the US, or offshore in other countries. It’s simply the right thing to do. But for those who don’t share this value, it generally makes sense from a cost perspective, too. In our experience, doing the right thing by employees is less costly in the long run.

This blog originally appeared in WorkersCompInsider.com on June 7, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Julie Ferguson is an insurance industry consultant with more than 20 years experience developing and implementing communications programs for workers compensation, workplace health & safety, employee communications, and general insurance programs. She founded and serves as editor for the nation’s first insurance weblog, Lynch Ryan’s Workers Comp Insider. She also founded and manages HR Web Café, a weblog for ESI Employee Assistance Group; Consumer Insurance Blog for the Renaissance Insurance Group; and is one of the administrators of Health Wonk Review, a bi-weekly health policy carnival. If you have a question for Julie, you can reach her at jferguson@lynchryan.com.

You’d expect the “father” of the cubicle to be a proud parent. Heck, his invention multiplied faster than rabbits. But you’d be wrong.

Thirty years ago, Robert Probst was seeking to create the perfect place to work for the office furnishings company Herman Miller. In search of the “office of the future,” he designed the perfect environment for maximum satisfaction and productivity. He called his creation “the action office.”

Yep, the cubicle. At the time Probst was looking for something better than the open bullpen that was the norm for much of the last century. He wanted to create a space that would allow privacy, personalization and the maximum in flexibility. For example, his original creation had a variety of surfaces that you could work from each that was a different height.

So much for privacy, personalization and flexibility. Just before his death in 2000, Probst called his creation “monolithic insanity” in Fortune.

There are many reasons why the “action office” devolved in the cube. Soaring real estate prices, corporations trying to get more bang for the buck by packing employees in like sardines and even the tax code (corporations can write off cubicles much faster than they can write off their investment in walls in an office building).

There is a part of me that believes that the successor to the cube will be emptying out our huge office buildings in a massive wave of telecommuting. This makes sense for so many reasons—spiraling gas prices, increasing real estate costs and the fact that so many homes now have broadband access. The only problem with this picture is that we barely know how to manage the people we can see at work, so few of us have the foggiest idea of how to manage people we can’t see.

Which leads back to the “action office.” It’s clear that business is now 0 for 2. The bullpen didn’t work. The cubicle has spawned Dilbert and a massive amount of griping from most of the people who’ve worked in one.

So what is the answer? I think it involves combining the best of the future with the best of the past. The first part of the equation is really figuring out what jobs can be done by telecommuting. And what workers and managers are up to this challenge. Once these jobs are moved out of our buildings then we’ll actually have the room to turn the cube back into the “action office” that Probst originally envisioned. With fewer people they can be bigger and hopefully employees can have the ability to tailor them to their needs.

For all the talk of productivity, I’m surprised at how little of the conversation addresses the place where most of our work actually gets done. If more of us engage in this conversation, hopefully, we’ll be able to put the “action” back into the “action office.”

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Eleven oil workers are still missing after a massive explosion and fire late Tuesday night on an oil rig off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig was under contract to BP Exploration and Production (BPEP).

Working In These Times has determined that BPEP has a history of safety violations, according to public records on file with the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the division of the federal Department of the Interior that oversees offshore drilling.

Penalties assessed to BPEP during the past decade include:

• $41,000 for a “loss of well control.” MMS found that BPEP “failed to verify employees were trained to competently perform the assigned well control duties.”
• $190,000 for an improperly installed fire diverter system. The lapse was discovered in the wake of a fire that damaged property and the environment.
• $80,000 for bypassing relays for the Pressure Safety High/Low on four producing wells.
• $70,000 for low pressure in the fire water system

Photo by U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images

The Tana Exploration Company, LLC was fined $190,000 after BPEP employees, working as contractors, bypassed the safety valves on a Tana rig. Investigators found that the rig failed to shut down in an emergency because the safety devices had been bypassed.

As a result, “[t]he pipeline experienced overpressure and the flange gasket ruptured allowing gas/condensate to escape,” according to MMS records.

The Wall Street Journal reports that BPEP’s parent company was fined $87 million for failing to make agreed upon safety upgrades to a Texas refinery after an explosion and fire that killed 15 people.

It is still unclear who was responsible for the April 20 explosion.

*This post originally appeared in Working in These Times on April 22, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Lindsay Beyerstein, a former InTheseTimes.com political reporter, is a freelance investigative journalist in New York City. Her work has appeared in Salon.com, Slate.com, AlterNet.org, The New York Press, The Washington Independent, RH Reality Check and other news outlets. Beyerstein writes a daily foreign affairs bulletin for the UN Foundation’s UN Dispatch website and covers healthcare for the Media Consortium. She is the winner of a 2009 Project Censored Award. She blogs at Majikthise.

Cab drivers earn as little as $4 an hour, regularly work 12-hour days six days a week, suffer debilitating work-related health problems and are mistreated and gouged by customers, city regulators and leasing companies. Yet most feel such a sense of pride and community in the occupation that they don’t even consider switching professions.

This was among the revelations at the United Association of Labor Education’s annual conference in San Diego last week, where Chicago professor Robert Bruno and east coast public health specialist Rebecca Reindel discussed their research in an increasingly high-profile field of study: cab drivers’ working conditions and organizing drives.

Bruno, whose work I’ve blogged about here before, has studied various facets of cab drivers’ daily lives, including wages and hours, frequency of violence and treatment by city regulators and leasing companies. He found that Chicago cab drivers on average earn only $4.38 an hour, often working almost 12 hours just to cover their lease and making a profit at the tail end of long shifts.

Cabdrivers with the United Taxidrivers Community Council (UTCC) joined forces with Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016 in Chicago in August 2008, demanding, among other things, a living wage for cab drivers. (Photo courtesy United Taxidrivers Community Council)

Reindel, pursuing a master’s in Public Health at George Washington University, studied occupational health effects on New York City cab drivers, in cooperation with the highly organized and active New York Taxi Workers Alliance. She found that nearly one in two drivers suffers moderate to severe pain each week that could be attributed to their job, with lower back pain not surprisingly being the most common complaint.

She found drivers also report significantly more pain on their right side, perhaps related to constantly twisting to collect fares and talk to passengers.

Reindel and a research partner identified a number of relatively simple and affordable remedies which drivers thought would greatly increase their comfort. The drivers identified safety shields, especially “L-shaped” ones that protrude between the driver and front seat passenger, as impeding their mobility and arm and leg space. Many drivers were unable to adjust their seats at all. In general, she noted that cars should be built as cabs from scratch in order to provide decent ergonomics and safety, as opposed to the usual procedure of retrofitting regular Crown Victorias or other vehicles.

Bruno and Reindel are often asked why, given the low wages, dangerous and grueling working conditions, and other drawbacks, people continue to drive cabs at all. The two researchers note that despite the problems, drivers feel an intense sense of pride in their work and also have tight-knit communities of drivers, especially within their own ethnic group. Groups of drivers from a given country, like Pakistan or Nigeria, are likely to all live in the same apartment building or even share apartments, Reindel noted.

“It’s such a cohesive unit,” she said, having observed the camaraderie and support among drivers during 12-hour ride-alongs. “For example, when they go to the airport it takes longer, they have to wait and they have to pay a tax, but it’s worth it because they like to mingle with their friends.”

More than half the drivers surveyed in Chicago and New York have college degrees, and many have graduate degrees. Though they are usually unable to work in their professional field in the U.S., driving a cab allows people to see themselves more as independent entrepreneurs than wage workers, Bruno notes.

“It’s a mobile sweatshop, but they do feel a pride in the job, and they are so embedded in the city of Chicago, they know the city so well and take pride in that,” said Bruno. “This is seen as much more dignified than working at McDonald’s. They’re businessmen, they have flexibility, though it’s flexibility without control since the city essentially controls them.”

Some drivers do own their own cabs and the medallions that most (though not all) cities require drivers to buy or lease in order to operate legally. But the vast majority of drivers lease cabs and medallions from major companies, or—less frequently—own their own cabs but lease medallions.

At the conference last week, Empire State College Professor Michael Merrill noted that the medallion system was typically a well-intended response to drivers’ own concerns about too many operators flooding the market…but the system in most cities turned into what could be called an exclusive racket controlled largely by just a few families or businessmen in a secretive manner.

Medallions in Chicago cost well over $100,000, and in New York they go for more than half a million dollars, making it extremely difficult for new owner-operators to enter the market and forcing them to work long hours just to pay off loans if they do.

Merrill proposes driving a cab should be a municipal job where workers could be organized by public employees unions and granted solid health benefits and pensions. But because of their independent spirits and negative stereotypes about unions harbored by drivers—perhaps because of experiences in their home countries—many drivers are resistant to these sorts of proposals.

Taxi drivers organizations, like the NYTWA in New York and the United Taxidrivers Community Council in Chicago, are springing up in a growing number of cities and often work together. They have called numerous strikes in recent years, but the nature of the industry is such that a very high percentage of drivers must participate to make a serious impact.

“This shows the difficulty of changing many of these situations,” Merrill said.

This post originally appeared in Working in These Times on March 30, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kari Lydersen, an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based journalist writing for publications including The Washington Post, the Chicago Reader and The Progressive. Her most recent book is Revolt on Goose Island.