Fighting Discrimination at the MTA
Submitted on Sun, 10/09/2005 - 5:30pm
By Harry Harrington, aka Sathari Singh Khalsa - Industrial Worker, September 2005.
In June of last year the New York City Transit Authority removed me from my job as a train operator for wearing a turban. I had worked there for 23 years with a turban, nearly all as a train operator. The bosses at the MTA were quickly compelled by adverse media coverage to return me to my regular job in passenger service. The initial attempt to put me out of sight failed. My case had reached millions through TV and newspaper accounts that made the MTA officials look like narrow-minded bigots.
Not to be frustrated in their efforts to control nearly all aspects of their employees' lives, the MTA bosses then told me that I had to "pick" a job in the yard during the next job selection process if I continued to wear my turban. As a member of the worldwide Sikh community, I could not remove my religiously mandated head covering and as a union activist I could not let them violate my rights. The media campaign continued and the pick came and I did not pick a yard job but a job I had been working for the last 12 years on the number four Lexington Avenue Express line. Their threat to fire me for picking my regular job proved empty.
They gave up trying to force me out of my job, as the public response was just too intense. They then tried to make the Sikh workers wear corporate advertisements on their turbans: the MTA logo. The number of Sikh MTA employees participating in the case has now grown to six, all of whom refused to wear logos on their religious symbols. The six Sikhs just wanted to do what they had done for decades, wear their company blue turbans. The MTA threatened to fire me unless I wore the patch, so I wore it under duress. Frustrated by the MTA's refusal to negotiate, we decided to sue. The Department of Justice took up the case, as did the Center for Constitutional rights and the Sikh Coalition.
Myself and the other Sikhs feel that the MTA's policy is discriminatory as only Sikhs have to wear corporate logos, other employees do not have to wear hats and the train operator uniform even has a style of hat issued without any identification. The Department of Justice did an investigation of the hat-wearing habits of train operators and found that most wore personal head coverings ranging from baseball hats to kufis and yarmulkes. The Department of Justice concluded that only myself and Sikh station agents were being forced to wear logos. The only employees harassed about head covering were the Sikhs.
The subway Sikhs resent this encroachment on their religion and its symbols by the MTA. The MTA has set itself up as a religious authority, telling Sikhs what to wear as part of their religious obligations. All of us were hired and promoted with turbans on. What we want is the same rights as other: the rights to wear hats without logos that we feel compromise the religious message of the turban with secular advertisements. The MTA is a state business that obtains most of its money from fares. They use the MTA logo in advertisement and the Sikh turban has now become another venue for their advertisements, thus degrading the turban with their commercialization. We subway Sikhs feel the purpose of the turban is to identify us as Sikhs, it is not a billboard.
The MTA has been unrelenting in implementing its disrespectful policy denying the Sikhs rights thought basic to American life. The MTA has harassed me and other Sikhs, threatening to fire us on several occasions.
The MTA has received protests from all over the world, from Swedish unionists to Punjabi farmers. The MTA has come to be perceived as a insular group of bigots throughout the English-speaking world after several BBC broadcasts. I myself have been on BBC/CNN broadcasts in Canada, United Kingdom, India and even Pakistan. My own cousins in Ireland, United Kingdom and friends in India have called or e-mailed support after seeing me on TV or hearing me on the BBC. My own trade union, Transport Workers Union local 100, has supported me as well.
The MTA's attacks on Sikhs, who are often mistaken for Muslims, is part of a wider campaign to stigmatize Middle-Eastern and South Asian peoples as terrorists. This policy lends itself to violence against these people and cultures in order to gain control of their resources. Many people forget that many people come to the West to escape the very fundamentalism they are lumped in with.
In the United States, several Sikhs have been shot and their houses of worship burned in the hysteria sweeping the country. Throughout their history, Sikhs have fought religious fundamentalists, with hundreds of thousands of killed, including several of our religious teachers.
My own fellow transit workers nearly all see this as an attempt by management to assert naked power over the workforce by demonstrating the extent to which they can ignore basic constitutional rights and past work practices. Several of my fellow transit workers have said the war and terrorist hysteria are being used by the MTA bosses to exert even greater control and implement their agenda including the destruction of our freedoms. They see the campaign against the turban as part of a greater movement to limit our freedom, regiment the workforce and destroy individuality of our multi-cultural workforce.
My fellow transit workers understand this campaign as a test of wills between workers who will not be coerced. Sadly, a rank-and-file newspaper said I was the only transit worker to have stood up to the MTA in years. I for myself have stood up, as that is the Sikh tradition. As Sikhs, we are not allowed to play the part of the coward or docile lamb, we must fight tyranny. To give up my fight would betray both the tenets of my faith and the best traditions of the labor movement, in particular the IWW.
Solidarity Forever