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Fight For Every Job: CETA Vets Seize Building

By VVAW

New York City's a mess. In the mad scramble to try to hold on to their profitable investments, the city's bankers, politicians and "civic leaders" have done all they can to push the city's crisis on to the people of the city. Job cutbacks--in essential services like fireman on teachers--increased taxes, slashes in services all are part of the formula pushed by the rich in order to save their economic skins.

Like other New Yorkers, vets have been hard hit. And like other people around the city, vets are fighting back. In December, the city Manpower and Caree Development Agency announced that 11,000 jobs under the CETA (Comprehensive Education and Training Act) program were being eliminated. This program, subsidized by the federal government, is designed to employ what they call the "hardcore unemployed"--which reads out as those whom the rich man's system cannot provide jobs for. The official reason given for firing these workers--the cuts were to start on the 30th of January and go on until June at the rate of 1800 per month--was the rehiring of some policeman, firemen and sanitation workers.

When vets at City College of New York (CCNY) heard about the cutbacks (there were 60 part-time jobs for vets funded under the program at the college) they united and planned a sit-in at the college administration building. At a meeting prior to the sit-in, VVAW offered to support the action, and the offer was accepted.

At 8:30 on the morning of December 22nd, some 20 vets, members of the newly formed Veterans Against CETA Cuts, took over the administration building, demanding that the college President, Robert Marshack, take a position against the CETA cuts as well as come out against the plans for a tuition at previously free New York City colleges. The vets held the building until their demands for a meeting with the President were met at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. A group of 50 protesters and leafletters, including members Of the New York City VVAW, supported the action outside the building.

The position of the college administration, like that of the government of the city of New York, is shakey; they apparently decided they could not afford to force vets out of the building. They did try the tactic of divide and conquer, however. Seventy-five students on the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK) program were due to get their monthly payments at the administration building. In fact, one of the New York newspapers, mouthing the line of the college administration, reported that the SEEK students were furious at being "turned away from the building by the veterans." In fact, vets united immediately with SEEK students by telling the administration to send SEEK staff into the building to pick up the checks. The administration refused, but after SEEK students marched on their "temporary" offices, the administration changed its mind. Another device to divide and conquer the people failed.

In fact the whole CETA cutback was pushed as a way to pit rehired city workers--the fireman, sanitation men, policemen--against CETA workers. The city government tried to say that they could hire only one or the other, but not both. As described in the last issue of The Veteran, the crisis of the city of New York is the direct result of the mammoth interest payments which have been piling up over the years (for instance, one elevated train system is still being paid for though the tracks have been torn down for years). That's why the bankers and their cronies are so interested in "solving the crisis"--and they're trying to do it by pushing the crisis on the people of the city. The are trying to make it look like a choice between CETA workers and civil servants in an attempt to divert attention from the real issue--the need of people for jobs, as opposed to the need of the capitalists for interest payments and profits.

But, programs like CETA were won through the struggle of thousands of people across the US, fighting for jobs. That's what caused the federal government to cough up the money in the first place. As the New York City VVAW chapter said, "The CETA cuts are one more way the rich try to put the burden of their crisis on our backs. Well, we have news for Beam, the Banks, the Federal government and all the other fat cats who want to screw us over--we say NO CUTS--NO WAY. We've got to FIGHT for EVERY JOB."

The refusal of vets at CCNY to quietly watch their jobs being stolen by the bosses sparked similar resistance in New Jersey. There, the Northern New Jersey chapter of VVAW went to work in support of CETA workers, many of them vets, facing similar cutbacks, layoffs, and an eventual phasing out of the program (by June, 1976--just in time for the Bicentennial celebration). While the bosses say cutback, vets and other CETA workers are fighting--with the same fight that won the CETA program in the first place.