Howza Bout a World Wide Messenger strike?
Great Idea Bill-but our problems at our little messenger community is that we can talk ourselves to death and plan strikes and job actions that our regular activist messengers will honor and attend, but will have no effect until we reach the ENTIRE workforce.
Not just bike messengers, not just drivers like myself or Nato.
How do we convince the other 400 + bike messengers? How do we bring in the 2000+ Driver messengers (and that includes Waiters on Wheeels, Pizza and Flower delivery people etc -in short THE ENTIRE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA DELIVERY COMMUNITY.)
Remember Tax Day? The media even played along with the idea that messengers would not be delivering your tax returns, but what ended up hapeening is that only 2 major companies were on strike that day and biz proceeded as usual. This was after planning for a city wide strike was worked on for months.
So do you think that just by saying here that we want a strike That it will happen? No.
How do we get drivers like the anti-union spys at Aero to get involved? How do you get bikers like Nosmo or Junior to stop working? How do you reach all of those Webvan and Kosmo messengers? How do you bring in the Entire Delivery Community? When I started the now dorment UBADD, it meant All Delivery Drivers, not just messengers. Even those guys that deliver newspapers. I once said at an SFBMA meeting that we are all part of the Trucking industry, and everyone groaned. Well it’s true!
I suggest, not a strike next week, or even next month, but a 6 month campaign leading up to 10-9 day of educating and collaring All delivery workers to join with us for an annual strike, and perhaps a downtown march. These kind of industry wide strikes take time and planning. Am I up for it? Honestly, no. Would I strike on Oct 10 if I knew that all my co-workers were participating? Yes.
