Wait a second, you mean conservative papers that largely sell to white-collar commuters wrote about working class public employees on strike in a condescending way? My God! There has to be **some** far-reaching, insidious force at work! Racism! Yes, it's racism! It can't be that complicated you know, class struggle deal. Racism! Oh joy, a simple argument with which even Leftists dare not quibble!
Seriously, get a grip.
Since moving out here to the whitest city in America - the land of liquid sunshine and the Aryan Nations, I have become very watchful for racist undertones to news stories. Neither all the coverage I read and heard of the strike nor my own experience riding the subways for years left any impression that Local 100 even had a particularly high percentage of people of color. (MTA workers always seemed to me to look like everybody else on the subway, as if they put blue uniforms on some of the riders) I certainly think that conservative papers put a racist spin on everything they can. I just don't think people associate MTA workers with being people of color. So, the message just wouldn't come across effectively. I'm sorry, I just don't find any racist implications in the article you cite.
As a matter of political economy and politics, I think the strike was a good thing. The media went after the TWU workers with typical top-down class warfare rhetoric and I don't think it stuck. The strike pushed the envelope, showed growing unrest about pensions and healthcare and Bloomberg looked like a hysteric, at least at this remove. The class struggle argument is the tougher one to make and I think the strike helped that argument. I think playing a race card would undermine the message and sound hollow.
If you think the racist angle is more important, fine. I'm telling you I think the class struggle angle is more important. That is why argue things like that here - to get things right.
boddi