Razzle Dazzle: TWU Convicted for Attitude

Razzle Dazzle
TWU Convicted for Attitude


Those inclined to believe that a Newsweek cover story about Mayor Bloomberg signaled heightened interest on his part in running for President got further support for that theory from his tough stance last week that persuaded a judge not to restore dues check-off rights for Transport Workers Union Local 100.

Just because George Pataki couldn't parlay his showdown with Local 100 President Roger Toussaint two years ago into a viable candidacy for the White House didn't mean it wouldn't help Mr. Bloomberg to run on the hard line.

Two key mayoral advisers insisted he took that position simply because it was warranted by the 60-hour transit strike in 2005. Nonetheless it seemed one of them, City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo, was unduly hyping the union as another crisis waiting to happen in his presentation before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Bruce Balter Nov. 7.

Internal Climate Chills Strike Chance

Because whatever the histories of Mr. Toussaint and his union when it comes to going to the barricades, the climate within Local 100 produced by that strike's disappointing results and not-unrelated in-house tensions makes this one situation where only a fool would call another walkout when the next contract expires in early 2009. Mr. Toussaint has been called many things, but not even his harshest critics take him for a fool.

REPUTATION RULES OVER REALITY: Internal problems within Transport Workers Union Local 100 would likely preclude any thoughts President Roger Toussaint (left) had of calling another transit strike, but Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo convinced a Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice that he shouldn't restore the union's dues check-off rights without firm commitments from its entire board not to walk out again. Citing three Local 100 strikes during the past 41 years over contract disputes, and other strike threats that evaporated when wage settlements were reached, Mr. Cardozo argued, "There is no union in the State of New York that has had this consistent pattern of violating the Taylor Law."

On sheer numbers, he was wrong. The United Federation of Teachers struck three times between 1967 and 1975, and there are some who would say there were actually five strikes during that period, since during the fall of 1968, the union on two occasions briefly ended its walkout only to resume it a short time later.

But although the 1968 job actions alone lasted longer than the combined 26 days of the three transit walkouts, the lack of a strike in the past 32 years makes it tough to color Teachers as the sort of desperate outlaws that TWU members were portrayed as by the Mayor and the city's two noisiest tabloids during the 2005 strike. Further, while Mr. Toussaint has been known to rail against "the power elite," UFT leader Randi Weingarten moves easily in its realm.

What was of particular concern, Mr. Cardozo told Justice Balter, was that Local 100's Web site still featured a speech given by the union's leader more than a year earlier in which he said that the key to gaining good contracts was "a credible threat of a strike." The TWU was forced to hit the picket lines two years ago, Mr. Toussaint said in remarks to an audience of union officials and labor academics, because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not believe that it had the nerve to do so. He added, "I think, however, that they will believe us next time."

Questions Whether He's Rehabilitated

Given those remarks, Mr. Cardozo said, Mr. Toussaint's recent statement in court papers that the union "does not assert the right to strike" under the Taylor Law was not terribly reassuring. "He doesn't disavow what he did in the past," the city's top lawyer said, "and he doesn't tell you he's not going to do it in the future."

But in order to allow the Local 100 leader's rhetoric to send chills down the municipal spine, it is necessary to disregard Mr. Toussaint's internal problems within the union. A man who won re-election 11 months ago with less than half the votes of participating union members may huff and puff, but without the support of an overwhelming majority of his rank and file, he won't generate enough wind to blow anybody's house down. As Steve Hyman, Local 100's vice chair of the Ulmer Park Bus Depot in Brooklyn, put it, "I don't think there's anything that Roger wouldn't do if he thought it was appropriate. On the other hand, I don't know who would follow him again. When you look back, what was the result of this strike? You can only follow someone onto the Road to Perdition one time."

Prior to the 2005 walkout, Mr. Toussaint repeatedly asserted that he and his members were not "strike-happy." Lawyers for both Local 100 and the TWU of America sought to reinforce that point last week, with David Rosen, speaking for the international union, pointing out, "There has been approximately one strike in any generation and never more than one strike in any given generation."

That is not an accident of luck. As Local 100 attorney Terry Meginniss told reporters following the hearing, "People who were on strike in 2005, very few of them were here in 1980." That was the occasion of the previous, 11-day walkout, one that did not end happily for Local 100 members or the union, which got dues check-off rights restored 14 months ahead of schedule back then by convincing a judge that bankruptcy was waiting for it at the next station. Those who endured the penalties from that strike didn't figure to be leading the call to arms two years ago.

1966 Rules Don't Apply

Much of the fuel for the 2005 walkout came from a mix of the toxic labor-management relations that enraged many union members, and gauzy memories of the 12-day transit strike that began on New Year's Day in 1966, one that produced generous wage terms and a stunning and pivotal labor defeat for Mayor John Lindsay at the outset of his first term. (It also, however, hastened the death of Local 100 President Michael J. Quill.)

That strike occurred prior to the Taylor Law - and was actually the catalyst for its passage in 1967 - which allowed workers to be fined two days for each day on strike and cost unions the automatic dues-deduction right they had gained just a short time before that.

Mr. Toussaint rallied his members against a proposal by the MTA of an inferior pension plan for future employees and a pay raise that partly hinged upon a reduction in sick leave. He ended the walkout when he was close to an agreement that provided 10.5 percent in wage hikes without a sick-leave trigger and did not include the lesser pension tier.

Giveback Struck a Nerve

It did, however, require members for the first time to pay a share of their basic health coverage, equaling 1.5 percent in earnings, including overtime. The fact that it provided several health-care gains for members, including continued coverage between age 55 - when they became eligible to retire at full pension - and 65, when they qualified for Medicare, did not mollify a majority of them. They believed that a key goal of the strike was to head off any givebacks, and so the health payments stood as a mark of failure.

That became clear when in late January of 2006, a month after the tentative contract was reached, it was rejected by a seven-vote margin out of more than 22,000 cast. Mr. Toussaint insisted members had been led astray by his political opponents and that he enjoyed the support of considerably more than half his rank and file. Last December's election proved him wrong for the second time, but with less-dramatic consequences, as he captured a third term as president even though he got just 45 percent of the vote.

Some union leaders would have taken that result as a signal to make nice with their critics and try to rebuild the coalition that three years earlier won Mr. Toussaint 60 percent of the Local 100 electorate. But as Mr. Hyman observed last week, "Not only has he not looked to mend fences but he's gone on a bridge-burning binge since the election."

Going After His Enemies

Over the past six months, Mr. Toussaint has thwarted more than a few of his inhouse critics from assuming offices to which they were democratically elected, or even competing for those offices. More often than not, he has done so by either accusing them of failing to remain current in their dues payments since check-off rights were suspended in June - a claim that has generally been refuted by receipts they have for those payments - or saying that their signing a letter urging members to pay dues but reminding them that he is obligated to manage their money properly amounts to advocating against dues payments.

It is an argument that flies in the face of both free-speech rights and logic, but Mr. Toussaint keeps invoking it. That has given rise to the belief in some quarters that he wasn't thirsting to regain check-off rights - Local 100 filed more than a month later than it could have for restoration - because allegations of unpaid dues, however flimsy, gave him the opportunity to disenfranchise a growing number of political opponents. Doing so, however, figured to further divide the union, making it unrealistic, as Mr. Hyman noted, to call a strike. Members' tolerance for a labor leader who can be a dictatorial bully generally ebbs when that official has failed to deliver at the bargaining table, and too many union members regard the contract that was ultimately produced by an arbitrator last year as inadequate compensation for the penalties they incurred for striking.

No 'Credible Threat'

That leaves Mr. Toussaint with a Catch-22 when it comes to presenting a "credible threat" of a strike. He can't do so without regaining the support of much of his rank and file, but the most-likely way to do that would be by negotiating a good contract.

When it was noted to Mr. Cardozo following the 55-minute hearing that those circumstances figured to dispel any thought Mr. Toussaint had of walking, he responded, "Maybe he wouldn't. But let's give the city the assurances right now."

The MTA was inclined to be more accommodating. Assistant State Attorney General Joel Graber, speaking on its behalf, urged the "middle ground" of conditionally allowing dues check-off again, subject to suspension if there was another strike, saving management from having to return to court to get an injunction against a job action.

"It gives the MTA some flexibility if we get into another strike situation," he explained. Conversely, Mr. Graber noted, continued suspension of check-off had a detrimental impact on labor relations at a time of improved dealings between the two sides. Already, he said, union staff cuts forced by the loss of dues income have meant that "the grievances are piled up, the disciplinary procedures are backlogged."

No Leniency From Judge

Justice Balter, who has a reputation for imposing tough sentences and in his youth ran for the State Senate in Brooklyn on a death-penalty platform, opted not to show mercy for Local 100, however. The union might have been working cooperatively with MTA management in recent months, he said, but he made clear he had doubts about the sincerity of Mr. Toussaint's statement recognizing that the union did not have the right to strike. "... the Court finds that the submission lacks credibility and renders the motion [for check-off reinstatement] inadequate," Justice Balter wrote in his Nov. 8 decision.

Giving the city everything Mr. Cardozo had requested a day earlier, the Justice concluded that the union could come back to him for relief "upon a showing of complete and unequivocal good faith compliance" that would feature affidavits from Mr. Toussaint and every other member of his executive board stating "in unequivocal terms that Local 100 lacks the right to strike against any government, to assist or participate in any such strike, or to impose an obligation to conduct, assist or participate in such a strike."

Reading the Riot Act

Usually, when judges get that in-your-face, it is to sentence a drug dealer to several life terms behind bars. In this instance, Justice Balter sounded a bit like a father trying to tell his rebellious teenager to lose the attitude and offer a heartfelt apology.

If so, he was missing a central point about Mr. Toussaint: his attitude is the one portion of his identity that has not been weakened by the strike and its aftermath.

His attempts to strip his political foes of power within the union, and to use the TWU international as an accessory, are not all that different from the way his old foe Sonny Hall operated first at Local 100 and later as International President. The difficulty Mr. Toussaint has had in persuading at least a quarter of his rank and file to keep up with dues payments voluntarily is a sign of how far reality has drifted from his dream of a united, powerful union that could exert influence outside the sphere of local transit.

Mr. Meginniss, during his oral arguments before Justice Balter, seemed to mean it when he said, "The strike was a bitter event for everybody. It was a bad episode." That is a long way from the title of the speech by Mr. Toussaint - ''The Strike: Our Proudest Hour" - that so concerned Mr. Cardozo. Its less-romantic view of the walkout also undoubtedly reflects how it will be perceived by this and future generations of Local 100 members.

'A Way to Diminish Him'

Justice Balter, perhaps posturing a bit himself, decided not to take any chances. Mr. Toussaint might have been able to use the judge's ruling as a rallying cry if he hadn't spent so much time recently antagonizing in-house critics who occupy key positions and have the loyalty of those who work with them.

Certainly Mr. Hyman's reaction to the city's court position lent weight to that. "I think they want this ironclad guarantee [against a strike] as a way to diminish Roger's standing," he said prior to Justice Balter's ruling.

The problem for Mr. Toussaint is that a sizable segment of his membership doesn't seem to believe that taking him down another peg is such a bad thing.

Editor's "Razzle Dazzle" Column RSS feed