Razzle Dazzle: Sound, Fury and the TWU

Razzle Dazzle
Sound, Fury and the TWU

By RICHARD STEIER

If a delegation from Mars had been admitted to the Nov. 14 debate among four of the five candidates for president of Transport Workers' Union Local 100, it would have walked away believing that the union's biggest problem is that Roger Toussaint isn't militant enough.

Mr. Toussaint's fellow participants - Ainsley Stewart, Mike Carrube and Anthony Staley - provided what amounted to an amusing counterpoint to the past caricatures of him in the city's loudest tabloids as the Labor Leader From Hell. They argued that Mr. Toussaint had offered weak leadership, and that his biggest mistake was calling off last December's strike after three days for a contract deal that required union members to pay a share of their health benefit premiums.

Absentee's Ballot Gets Punched

While the debate, held at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies in midtown, predictably focused on Mr. Toussaint's leadership, he wasn't the candidate who got hammered the hardest. That honor, both before and after the proceedings, fell to the man who wasn't there, Barry Roberts, who is expected to provide the stiffest challenge to the Local 100 president based on his having collected far more petition signatures than the other insurgents.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow UNUSUAL POSITION FOR TOUSSAINT: For much of last week's debate, Transport Workers' Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint (far right) found himself in the unaccustomed position of being the voice of moderation as his leadership was assailed by challengers (from left) Mike Carrube, Ainsley Stewart and Anthony Staley.

Mr. Roberts is being represented by the communications firm of political consultant George Arzt, but his opponents suggest maybe he should have retained Cyrano de Bergerac to do his talking for him. They asserted that he was missing from the debate because he is largely a figurehead; that the slate's public voice has been John Samuelsen, who is running for secretary-treasurer, and that the real brains of the operation is Sonny Hall, the past president of both Local 100 and the International TWU.

"Sonny's the first name of all the guys on that slate," said Eddie Creighton, a Bronx Train Operator who is running on Mr. Carrube's slate. "Sonny Roberts, Sonny Samuelsen ..."

Mr. Toussaint, asked afterward whether he was surprised by Mr. Roberts's no-show, replied, "Barry has never been his own man, can't speak for himself. Mike Tutrone [another veteran TWU official] and Sonny Hall are his sponsors. He can't respond without checking with them."

Ainsley Stewart, the candidate who seemed most comfortable in the free-form word-slinging, said, "I would have been surprised if Barry had showed up. Barry is the person who would not run the marathon but would hide in the bushes and then jump out for the photo op."

 

The irony of this comment was that the debate itself was primarily a media creature. Rank-and-file members couldn't attend, except for a dozen supporters designated by each slate. The original expectation that the event would be televised by New York 1 didn't materialize; the station's transit reporter, Bobby Cuza, said he planned to show five or six minutes of excerpts on his Nov. 17 program, which would be repeated several times after that.

This meant that Local 100 members would have to rely on either those video clips or the limited newspaper accounts to judge which candidates fared the best.

In a phone interview the following afternoon, Mr. Roberts responded to all his critics while noting that when he ran on a ticket headed by Noel Acevedo three years ago and they asked for a debate, "Roger ignored us, acted like we were nobody."

"I'll debate Roger - in three years, after he's been taken out," the suddenly combative Mr. Roberts said. "It's not about public shows and public debates. My plan is to go out and touch every one of our members."

'Sonny's Not in My Campaign'

He insisted that Mr. Hall, who like Mr. Roberts came out of the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority, "has nothing to do with this campaign. Mike Tutrone is a division chairman who works under me. I am lucky to have Mike Tutrone by my side. I think Roger needs to take his paranoia somewhere else."

When it was pointed out that Mr. Toussaint was not the only candidate who believed Mr. Hall was a major influence in his campaign, Mr. Roberts responded, "As far as Carrube and Ainsley, they've got to be negative because they bring nothing else to the table. I know how to speak and speak well; I don't need Sonny Hall or Mike Tutrone speaking for me."

Mr. Toussaint may well have decided, facing a stiffer challenge than he got from Mr. Acevedo in his first re-election bid three years ago, that if he held a debate, he would have a tactical advantage over the candidate who has shown the most strength of his opponents. Not even his political foes were likely to dispute his statement to reporters, apropos Mr. Roberts, that, "In my administration or my campaign, there's no question about who's in charge and who's the presidential candidate."

Even as his opponents put forth the claim that he had been too soft in dealing with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, they also contended that Mr. Toussaint had been too much in charge of the 34,000-member union.

'Handcuffed His Officers'

"How strong a union leader puts handcuffs on a union's officers?" asked Mr. Carrube, who emphasized that he has not been on the Local 100 executive board since 2004 and so bore no responsibility for "this disaster we call a contract." He was referring to the deal negotiated last December by Mr. Toussaint, which contained the provision requiring members to pay 1.5 percent of their earnings toward health premiums.

Mr. Stewart, a Local 100 vice president, disclaimed responsibility for Mr. Toussaint's decision, saying, "The president at every step of the way at every level excluded not only the members but the board members."

The moderator, Gene Carroll of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, asked generic questions aimed at all of the candidates. This choice preventing him from querying Mr. Toussaint about two of the most frequent criticisms of his leadership style: that he does not engage board members enough and he is intolerant of dissent. He has had an unsettling number of clashes with former allies, something the Local 100 president acknowledged without prompting in his closing statement by saying, "I'm a tough leader. I hold myself to tough standards, and I hold people under me to tough standards."

The format also prevented Mr. Carroll from asking other confrontational but fair questions of the challengers about how they could expect their angry rhetoric to produce better results than Mr. Toussaint's own militancy and the first transit strike in a quarter-century had achieved.

There was a disconnect between their prescriptions and reality, and a nostalgia for an era when Michael J. Quill used a transit strike to win a smashing victory for his members, although the effort wound up literally killing him.

Shaky Comparison

Mr. Carrube quoted the late TWU leader in his opening statement: "We were all poor, we were all overworked. We were down so low on the economic ladder that there was nowhere to go but up." He then stated, "That fact still holds true today," due to recent pay raises that he said were below the increases in the cost of living.

The reality is, though, that transit workers are among the better-paid public employees in this city, something the tabloids seized on during the strike in trying to stir up public sentiment against Train Operators who earned more than $50,000 a year in base salary and didn't have to pay a dime for health insurance.

Mr. Stewart reminded those present that he had called for Local 100 to demand 10-percent annual raises. Instead, he said, Mr. Toussaint settled for raises averaging 3.5-percent annually, partly offset by the health-care giveback, "at a time when the Transit Authority has money coming in like waves at the seashore. If you can't score now, you'll never score."

Like a Younger Toussaint

The vivid rhetoric ignored the reality that the Local 100 raises were consistent with what municipal unions have been accepting at a time when the Bloomberg administration has a far bigger surplus than the MTA had a year ago. Mr. Stewart's call for double-digit raises seemed as far-fetched as when a similar argument was advanced three contracts ago by Mr. Toussaint, who at the time was an outsider hoping to be nominated for president by the dissident group known as New Directions.

The TWU president had sought to pre-empt a charge made by Mr. Stewart in his opening statement - that he ended the strike and "brought us back without a contract" - by telling the Daily News for its editions a day earlier that he had made a "secret deal" with MTA negotiators before taking the vote that led transit workers to return to their jobs several days before an agreement was announced.

This wasn't a surprise; it was widely believed that Mr. Toussaint would not have given up what leverage he still had from having shut down the transit system unless he had verbal assurances of a contract package. Many TWU members may not have made that assumption, however, and if they had been told before returning to work that they were going to have to pay a portion of their salaries toward health benefits as part of the deal, they might have been reluctant to end the strike.

None of the debaters made that point, however, even as they laid into Mr. Toussaint for what they described as a capitulation to management.

'We're a Disgrace'

Mr. Carrube contrasted that provision of the still-born Local 100 deal with the terms for supervisory employees, who pay a much smaller amount - in set dollars rather than based on earnings - for similar coverage. "We're being looked upon as a disgrace with that 1.5 percent," he said.

Mr. Staley criticized Mr. Toussaint for negotiating that provision as part of the price paid to provide full health coverage between ages 55 and 65 to retired union members, adding, "If you work overtime, that 1.5 works against you."

Mr. Stewart said of member health coverage, "Transit should pick up the full bill, unconditionally. Period."

Missing from their tough talk, however, was an explanation of how they would have forced the MTA to grant the other financial terms without that giveback.

In his opening statement, Mr. Toussaint said that management had intended "to force transit workers to accept a bare-bones contract. It took a tough decision, a tough call, to stay the course rather than accept [MTA Chairman Peter] Kalikow's offer." In return for having members pay a share of their health benefits, he noted, he had gotten improved health coverage for retirees, a pension refund for those who had contributed extra to the retirement system prior to 2001, an additional paid holiday, paid maternity leave, improved death and disability benefits and a fairer disciplinary process.

'Up Against Bad People'

It was unrealistic to believe that even the toughest negotiator could secure those gains without having to give something up, he said, explaining, "We are up against very bad people." That remark was one of the few times in the debate when Mr. Toussaint did not sound like the most moderate and well-grounded of the participants.

However much his position as the leader of the union forced him to adjust his rhetoric and tactics to the real world, it still was somewhat jarring to hear Mr. Toussaint referred to by the other candidates as someone who bowed before management.

Mr. Stewart accused Mr. Toussaint of being "more concerned with giving back to the Transit Authority rather than demanding."

Mr. Carrube said that the 2002 contract that toughened the procedures for dealing with excessive sick leave amounted to those with personal problems being "sold down the river" by Mr. Toussaint.

"In our own collective-bargaining agreement," he said, "we are giving away jobs. We have painters going out and doing masonry work; masons painting depots ... the union has always been on the defensive. I tell you now, it's time that we go on offense."

'Been Inside Too Long'

And Mr. Staley, who said it was his first debate and seemed tentative when it came to discussing specifics, accused Mr. Toussaint of "poor management and incompetence" when it came to the contract. "You been in that union hall too much, too long, and maybe you got to come back on the road," he said.

There were times when the thinness of the rhetoric became painfully obvious, as when Mr. Stewart criticized Mr. Toussaint for not beginning the strike as soon as the contract expired at 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 16.

What he neglected to mention was that the expiration occurred on a Friday morning, the day of the work week when a strike would have had the smallest impact, with the pressure exerted on management dropping even more over the weekend. In that context, Mr. Toussaint's decision to keep negotiating was not a failure of nerve but a tactical move that bought a few days to try to reach a deal while also pushing the walkout to a part of the week - the strike began the following Tuesday morning - when it offered far greater bargaining leverage.

It was no surprise, then, that Mr. Toussaint dismissed his opponents as "people who are good at pointing fingers" but have no experience in standing up to the type of pressure he has endured during the past two contract negotiations.

He acknowledged "some weaknesses" in communicating information about the contract to members before it was narrowly rejected last January. But he said his overall approach to running the union, from getting members more involved in its operation to building unity among its various divisions, had been essential to its regaining strength and becoming a force to be reckoned with after years of docility under his predecessors.

Did He Hold the Line?

Rather than defending his decision to have members pay a portion of their health insurance, he cited his success under the 2002 contract in having the program converted to a defined benefit, which "inoculated it from inflation." Given the confrontational stance taken by the MTA, egged on by forces that included Governor Pataki, the tabloids and Wall Street, Mr. Toussaint said that during the last contract negotiation the prime task was to "hold the line."

His opponents claim he failed to do that when he accepted the health-benefit concession. Mr. Toussaint believed that was preferable to accepting an inferior pension plan for future workers, telling the audience, "I am more concerned about the dark clouds that are surrounding the entire labor movement" because of private companies reducing or eliminating pensions and the growing demand for similar economies in the public sector.

None of the debaters talked about whether the shift from George Pataki to Eliot Spitzer as Governor, with a change in the MTA's leadership expected to accompany it, would transform the climate that currently exists for transit workers. Perhaps that's because such musings would have changed the dialogue from fiery to philosophical, something that wouldn't score many points with their audience.

'Change MTA Culture'

Talking to reporters afterwards, Mr. Toussaint implied that the problem goes deeper than an MTA Chairman chosen by a Republican Governor looking to burnish his image as tough on labor with GOP voters across the country. "We need leadership at the MTA that will change the culture," he said.

Heading home, I encountered one of Mr. Stewart's supporters on the subway platform. When I asked him why transit workers are so heavily disciplined, and why the issue has stirred such fury, he said much of it had to do with insecurity.

Many of the managers in his division, he said, were less knowledgeable than the employees they supervised. The only way for them to gain positive attention from their bosses, he said, was to be stern disciplinarians.

Too many line employees, he continued, were so worried about being disciplined and possibly losing their jobs that they became passive. They brooded rather than standing up for themselves, and those who were assertive produced stronger responses from management trying to maintain an overall atmosphere of docility.

Food for Thought

I have no idea whether his analysis is accurate, and whether it carries over to other divisions in the transit system. But it sounded more well-reasoned and interesting than just about anything said during the debate.

Mr. Roberts was right on one count: the race for president of Local 100 - which amounts to a vote of confidence on Roger Toussaint - won't be won in a small midtown classroom, but in the shops and depots where workers will decide whether to vote their hopes or their anger, and then figure out which candidate best fits their mood.