TWU Veto a Mistake
Unions Can't Eat Their Own

By BRANDON L. WARD

After 60 hours of the Transport Workers' Union strike, the point was made: "Respect Us." Indeed, everyone who is convincible is convinced that the TWU's leadership is not the two evils of Mayor Bloomberg's characterization: "thuggish" and "selfish."

Certainly, there is no question in my mind that, in a rational MTA world, the strike could have been avoided. According to a January New York Times article ("Pension Demand Was an Error"), while waxing nostalgic, the chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, acknowledged misjudging the union's "hostility" to his demands that future workers accept a higher retirement age or contribute more to their pension than current workers do.

'No Last-Minute Theft'

This admission reveals the disconnect reported between MTA's management and labor. Evidence: a side agreement was made. This agreement called for the MTA to give the union members $131.7 million in pension refunds in spite of Governor Pataki's threat to block the refund. Come to think of it, not bad for some thugs, considering the fact that according to the New York Times, the MTA chief negotiator, Gary J. Dellaverson, commented: "It wasn't a last-minute highway robbery."

When a situation can work just as easily for you as against you, it is called a double-edged sword. Certainly that has been the case before, during, and in the aftermath of the strike.

Before the strike, reading the articles and "letters to the editor" in this paper informed me of the not-so-pleasant divisions within the union's (most unions for that matter) leadership ranks. During the strike, the TWU International President, Michael O'Brien, distanced himself from the local, and encouraged members to return to work. In the aftermath of the strike, the local's membership rejected the contract by a margin of seven votes. To put it bluntly, some on the lunatic fringe - the Revolutionary Transit Worker - have opined that the Post's editorial support of the contract was "convincing-enough" evidence to reject the contract.

Against this reality, it is not far-fetched to say that such division gives comfort to one's adversaries.

From this observer's chair, in a rational universe, we play the role we play because of who we are. In other words, Mayor Bloomberg played a mayoral role during the strike. Unfortunately, in a Giuliani moment, our plutocratic mayor, in effect, pitted the working poorer (individuals earning $30K and less: a profile of the average District Council 37 members) against the working poor (Transit Workers who reportedly earn an average annual salary of $54K) to illustrate the union's selfishness.

Eroding Union Rights

Similarly, governors play gubernatorial roles. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article titled, "Three Republican Governors Hit Unions," the writer observed: "Several Republican governors are trying to weaken organized labor in the one place it has remained strong: representing public employees.

First-term Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt rescinded collective-bargaining rights for state employees this year, undoing an executive order issued by a Democratic predecessor, and has eliminated a state board overseeing union elections for public employees.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a former Bush White House budget director, overturned an executive order that for 15 years provided collective-bargaining rights for that state's public employees. And Maryland's Robert Ehrlich, backed by the state Supreme Court, suspended a 2-percent pay increase unions had negotiated for state employees with his predecessor.

It is my belief that Roger Toussaint and his team played a leadership role by making rational demands based on principles of justice, logic and equity; they did not apologize for offending their MTA friends at the expense of their members; they did not suffer historical amnesia; they acted on the belief that dignity is not exchangeable for cash and they did not elevate the art of sell-out to the level of a moral principle.

This notwithstanding, 11,234 members voted to reject the contract based on the romantic appeal of the local's dissidents' insistence that too much was negotiated away.

Let me be blunt. What exactly do these members expect to happen in a negotiation? That the MTA will yield to their every demand? Is that how it usually works? Is that the way they would have negotiated in the PBA or UFA or UFT negotiations? Or do the leaders of the dissidents feel that, being disproportionately white males, the MTA or Mayor Bloomberg would have behaved differently toward them than the "thuggish" leadership?

Certainly, those of us who have an understanding of the times are keenly aware that the political process is principally concerned with creating and shaping relationships of power. And we understand power as: The ability to do what you want to do when you want to do it; the ability to get others to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it. And, the ability to get the most, and the best, of whatever there is to get, even if other interests are opposed to it. But we also understand that politics is the art of the possible, which, in a competitive capitalist democracy often means compromise, accepting the lesser evil.

Short View Costly

Broadly speaking, for far too long most of us (union members) have watched in dismay as little men with no vision for the future of the "unborn" workers occupy our unions' leadership limelight. In the process, our benefits have precipitously declined.

As a historical asterisk, consider this: In the late 1960s, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the Vietnam war, embraced militant union struggles, and barnstormed around the country blasting wealth and class privilege, the red-baiters and professional King haters branded him a Communist. The Lyndon Johnson White House turned hostile. Corporate and foundation supporters slowly turned off the money spigot. The NAACP, Urban League, black Democrats, and some in King's own organization turned their backs on him.

During his last days, King spent much of his time fundraising and defending his policies against the critics within and without his organization. The backbiting, carping at and backpedaling away from King - not by his enemies, but by some of his one-time friends and supporters - got worse when he railed against the penchant for lavish personal spending, luxury apartments and fancy homes of some of his group's staffers.

Bristled at Challenge

At the National Baptist Convention in 1961, King challenged the convention's leaders to give more active support to the civil rights battles. They wanted none of that. They flung threats and insults at King, and the civil rights advocate-ministers engaged in fisticuffs with them and slandered King as a "hoodlum and crook."

When the dust settled, King was summarily booted out of the organization, and he set up a rival ministers' group. Even after King's death and subsequent placement among America's heroes, many black ministers remained silent on the assault on civil liberties protections, the gutting of job and social programs, and U.S. militarism. These were all issues that King relentlessly and loudly spoke out against when he was alive.

As George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet, novelist and Harvard professor warned us: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is still good advice, and worth remembering by the TWU's 33,700 members.

Brandon L. Ward is President of New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the city's Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.