Explains Strike Decisions
To Activists, Toussaint a Hero

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

If the crowd that attended the City University of New York's Sept. 28 seminar and panel discussion on the effects of December's three-day transit strike were voting members of Transport Workers' Union Local 100, President Roger Toussaint would be assured an easy re-election. The packed auditorium of labor leaders and organizers, as well as academic experts, greeted Mr. Toussaint with cheers and applause, and offered him an even more enthusiastic standing ovation at the close of his speech.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang 'LIKE SOLDIERS': Chris Silvera (right), secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 808, kicked off a panel discussion on the effects of the three-day transit strike by comparing Transport Workers' Union Local 100 members to soldiers in Iraq. Joining him were Adrianne Shropshire of New York Jobs with Justice and J. Phillip Thompson, Associate Professor of Urban Studies at MIT.

Cites In-House Obstacles

Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, who made the final remarks on the panel that analyzed the strike "as a challenge to the power structure," lauded Mr. Toussaint for orchestrating a work stoppage "with a less-than-stellar international union, and a rank-and-file dissident movement that I called an 'unholy alliance.'"

Chris Silvera, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 808 in Long Island City, later remarked that the labor movement "[owed] the members of Local 100 as much as we owe the soldiers in Iraq" for taking a stand against the prevailing anti-worker attitude in New York.

When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Toussaint drew a laugh from the room by noting that - with all due respect to the wide-ranging and left-leaning panel discussion that had just occurred - "We did not go on strike to end globalization. We did not go on strike to end neo-liberalism, and we did not go on strike to end the Bloomberg regime."

'MTA Didn't Fear Us'

The short answer, he said, was that the union struck because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority "didn't believe that we would go on strike. They didn't see us as a credible threat."

The power you have at the bargaining table, Mr. Toussaint told the audience, comes from the strength you project on the shop floor.

The union began its public preparations for a strike months before contract negotiations began, he said, because it wanted the MTA to know it was serious about its terms. It was also done to prepare the members for the rigors of a walkout, and groom a new crop of strike captains.

It had been 25 years since the previous strike, Mr. Toussaint said, a full generation in the life-span of transit workers. Despite its many demonstrations and rallies, including picket lines where workers held signs that read "Just Practicing," the MTA didn't take the hint, Mr. Toussaint said.

After laying out the events leading up to the walkout, Mr. Toussaint explained why he brought the workers back after just three days.

"I've participated in six strikes - two at Liberty Bus Lines, two at Queens and two in Connecticut - and strikes are deadly serious business," he said. "It's easier to go out strong than to come back strong. And a losing strike damages the very heart of a union. Look at the failed Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981, and what that did to the collective bargaining process of many unions for years later."

It was his responsibility, he said, to identify a victory and bring the members back.

Formidable Opponents

Mr. Toussaint said transit workers were up against "the MTA, a Governor who wants to be President, a billionaire Mayor, a rabidly anti-labor business establishment," an ambivalent international union, unfavorable press and public infighting.

The last part was nothing new, he said, because at Local 100, "we wash our laundry out in public even before it's dirty." But the other elements made it extraordinarily difficult for members, he said.

There wasn't time to tell the full story of the strike - with its many heroes, heroines, and villains - but Mr. Toussaint insisted that it ended with real advances for his members, including a long-deserved pension fund.

The last chapter in the history of the strike was still being written, he told the audience, and it was a battle the union was fully engaged in.

"Everybody here gets to put in a word or two," he said, "Choose carefully. They matter."