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Saturday, October 5, 2019
its a robbery say
say nassau otb employeeswho awaith the jamaican central banks production team to standup for the interests of jamaican horse bettors et al at nassau otb. it's a robbery snd kevin mccaffrey suffolk county legislator and lresident of teamsters local 707 is a real patrick fiye
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The contract battle between transit workers and the agency is getting bitter.
Since May, the two sides have been without a contract, and now, the workers union is launching a million dollar ad campaign vilifying chairman Pat Foye, CBS2’s Lisa Rozner reports.
The Transport Workers Union Local 100 is sending a scathing message through TV and radio ads, saying, “Transit workers were assaulted or harassed more than 2,300 times last year. … Only the MTA and chairman Pat Foye would tolerate such employee abuse and then demand a wage freeze.”
The ad also says the agency’s management spent $2 billion on consultants in five years.
It comes as the 40,000-plus union members — including bus drivers, subway conductors and cleaners — go on five months without a new contract.
The union says the sticking points are the MTA’s requests for a wage freeze, asking members to double the employee contributions for health insurance and only hiring new bus operators part-time.
“We don’t have money to pay workers. We’re going to cut service to the public. Is it fair to the workers? Is it fair to the public? It’s all bs. It’s all bs,” said TWU Local 100 treasurer Earl Phillips.
While waiting for the MTA to respond to an interview request, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer tried getting the agency’s side at an unrelated press conference.
They told her they had to stay on topic and they would release a statement.
A spokesperson said by email that Foye and the MTA’s top priority is the safety and security of the workforce and says it’s adding 500 new MTA police to protect employees and riders. She maintained good faith negotiations with the union are ongoing.
But former MTA chairman Peter Kalikow says it’s looking like deja vu to his time in 2005 when the union workers last went on strike.
“The people who live and work in the five boroughs, they’re the ones who get the beating here,” he said. “If there’s an overly generous settlement, they’re going to get it either by paying more taxes or by paying higher fares.”
The union says the two parties met earlier this week, but it’s unclear when they will both be back at the negotiating table.
The union is planning a massive rally outside the MTA’s Broadway offices on Oct. 30. Leaders won’t say whether this could lead to a strike.
As a drumbeat eases the listener into a familiar reggae rhythm, the high tenor of Jamaican pop star Tarrus Riley cuts through the groove.
All the high prices that mean me harm
They can go back where they came from
No inflation monster
Shall prosper!
Mr. Riley looks into the camera and explains in Jamaican patois: “High inflation is a wicked ting, and we must banish it like slavery….Low, stable and predictable inflation is to the economy like what the bass line is to reggae music.”
The Bank of Jamaica has launched what may be the grooviest public-education campaign ever undertaken by a central bank.
The Bank of Jamaica video featuring Tarrus Riley.
Over the past year, the bank called on local pop stars to record upbeat songs in reggae and dancehall styles and to produce YouTube music videos explaining such buzz-killing concepts as inflation targeting, monetary policy and consistent GDP growth.
One video features a woman tooling around the capital in a sports car while a singer sings about how inflation targeting can help boost the economy.
Keep de rates dem low, stable and intact
So de consumers can buy more good wit dem cash!
Next up for the central bank: a single and music video inspired by dancehall star Sean Paul’s 2005 hit “Temperature,” featuring what the bank hopes will become a viral craze called the Inflation Dance.
The campaign is the brainchild of Tony Morrison, a former hotel talent booker and television reporter who now serves as the central bank’s head of communications. He says he has wanted for years to marry reggae and monetary policy, and finally got the go ahead from the administration of Andrew Holness, elected prime minister in 2016.
“We wanted to have some songs about changes to our foreign-exchange reserves policy a few years ago, but in the end decided it was too complicated,” Mr. Morrison says. “Things like inflation targeting, however, are the type of things that everyone should know about, and the best way to reach the people of Jamaica is through reggae.”
A Bank of Jamaica video promoting inflation targeting.
Behind Jamaica’s playful strategy is a serious goal: to build public support for a government policy designed to bring economic stability to a country that has long been a financial basket case.
In recent decades, Jamaica’s central bank kept interest rates low and printed money to help the government finance a budget deficit. As a result, annual inflation averaged 19.2% between 1990 and 2010, the country suffered periodic crises, and its economy grew by only 0.4% a year, on average, over the past two decades.
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In 2013, Jamaica got its 15th bailout from the International Monetary Fund since independence in 1962. The international lender handed over $1 billion but demanded a broad austerity program that included freezing government-employee wages, cutting spending and raising taxes.
Today, inflation has fallen to under 4%, debt is lower, the unemployment rate is at a historic low and the economy has grown for 16 consecutive quarters.
The austerity measures are notoriously unpopular. The public has “reform fatigue,” much as Greeks did during the eurozone crisis, says Marla Dukharan, chief economist at Bitt Inc., a financial-technology company that focuses on the Caribbean region. “Perhaps if the Greek authorities had a tool as powerful and popular as reggae music, there’s a possibility that their reforms could have been socially more acceptable,” she says.
The inflation videos have been posted on YouTube.
On a recent afternoon at Kingston’s Big Yard Studio, Mr. Riley praised the Bank of Jamaica’s effort to explain the laws of economics to the people.
“A regular man, him want to know what him getting for his money,” he said. Economics “shouldn’t be a selective conversation. It should be public knowledge.”
In the Red Hills Road section of Kingston, Maria Hitchens, a choreographer and dance teacher, demonstrated the “Inflation Dance” she created for the upcoming music video. The Bank of Jamaica, she said, wanted the dance to match the lyrics of the song, which says inflation should be predictable, stable and low.
As the new song recorded by the singer Denyque blared, Ms. Hitchens and a local dance crew called Flame Team pantomimed a bank teller doling out dollar bills from a pile.
We no want it too high
We no want it too low
With inflation stable and predictable
That’s the way to go
Cause when it high
People are gonna cry
When it’s too low
The economy can’t grow
Choreographer Maria Hitchens, right, and a local dance crew demonstrate the ‘Inflation Dance.’PHOTO: ROBBIE WHELAN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mr. Morrison, who wrote the lyrics, also is trying to spread the central bank’s message on billboards and in elementary schools. He plans to introduce an inflation-fighting cartoon crocodile inspired by James Bond. British novelist Ian Fleming wrote all of his Bond novels in Jamaica.
Earlier this year, Mr. Morrison invented a vodka-based cocktail called the Financial Regulation to serve at Bank of Jamaica events. Instructions given to bartenders say it contains a dash of Angostura bitters “since regulators are the stern type,” and one measure of simple syrup “because there must be some incentive.”
Politics and reggae have been connected here for decades. At the One Love concert in Kingston in April 1978, a time of intense political and gang violence, reggae superstar Bob Marley called Prime Minister Michael Manley and opposition leader Edward Seaga onstage and joined the two rivals’ hands over his head in a sign of political unity.
Under Mr. Manley’s leadership, Jamaica began borrowing heavily to pay for social programs, setting the stage for Jamaica’s recent fiscal struggles, according to Peter Henry, a Jamaican-born economist and former dean of New York University’s business school.
Today’s reggae-based campaign, he says, is a way to “create an electorate that will vote populist leaders out of office if they try to return to the bad old days of populist policies.”
The campaign is the brainchild of Tony Morrison, the central bank’s head of communications.PHOTO: ROBBIE WHELAN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In November, Jamaica will exit its IMF assistance program. Parliament is debating a bill that would make its central bank independent of the elected government, with controlling inflation as its primary mandate.
Bank of Jamaica, the IMF and government officials are big fans of the music campaign, and of reggae generally.
In September, former IMF managing director Christine Lagarde praised the use of reggae to explain inflation targeting, and remembered fondly how government officials here made her sing “La Vie En Rose” to a reggae beat.
The Bank of Jamaica’s new governor, former insurance executive Richard Byles, says he wants to keep making the reggae videos.
“You could say I’m a Bob Marley mon, I’m a Usain Bolt mon, and I’m an inflation-targeting mon,” Mr. Byles says.
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