Checkoff Loss June 1
TWU Prepares To Take Up Collection

By RICHARD STEIER

Transport Workers' Union Local 100, facing the loss of the right to automatically have members' dues deducted from their New York City Transit paychecks beginning June 1, has begun implementing alternate collection methods to minimize the loss of revenue.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow KEEPING THE UNION ON-TRACK: Transport Workers' Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint brought the union's elected officers and shop stewards together to discuss the alternative ways of collecting members' dues once automatic paycheck deductions are suspended June 1 as a penalty for the December 2005 transit strike.

Voluntary Deductions

A spokesman for Local 100 President Roger Toussaint said an unidentified Internet provider and the Amalgamated Bank would supply the means to have dues either automatically deducted, with members' consent, from their checks, or paid through credit-card charges. Union members will also have the option of mailing dues to a central bursar's office.

"We're trying to get everybody signed up in terms of which way they're going to be committing," said the spokesman, Dave Katzman.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow DISMISSES MEDIA ONSLAUGHT: Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion tells transit union officials that the negative portrayals of them during the three-day strike should be viewed as a tribute to their militancy, explaining, 'If you don't do anything, nobody will criticize you.'

The dues checkoff revocation, which will be in effect for at least three months, is among the penalties imposed upon Local 100 for its illegal three-day strike in December 2005. The sentencing judge, Theodore T. Jones, who has since been elevated from a Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice to a seat on the State Court of Appeals, delayed that penalty to allow the union to first pay $2.5 million in fines. Individual transit workers lost two days' pay for each day on strike, as is required under the Taylor Law prohibiting public-employee walkouts.

Local 100 used a meeting of its officers and shop stewards March 30 at the Sheraton New York Hotel to unveil its plans and prod union representatives to get the rank-and-file workers within their jurisdiction to participate.

Union Recording Secretary Darlyne Lawson urged on the 200-plus officials in attendance by saying, "We have to make sure the MTA and the courts don't bankrupt our union, don't we?"

'Wake Up Sleeping Giant'

Secretary-Treasurer Ed Watt followed her to the ballroom podium and pointed out that one measure of the union's clout was that three leading contenders for the Democratic mayoral nomination in 2009 - City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion - had come to address them.

Mr. Watt called Local 100 "truly a sleeping giant," then demanded, "Are we going to wake up?"

"Yes," the other union officers responded.

At the end of the three-month revocation period, the union will be permitted to appeal to the court to have checkoff rights restored. Its leadership would have to pledge not to strike again, which Mr. Toussaint to this point has declined to do.

Local 100 lost its checkoff rights 25 years ago as the penalty for an 11-day strike in 1980. It got them restored in part by contending that the union had been so hurt by the loss of dues revenue that it was on the verge of bankruptcy, although some veteran Local 100 officials have since contended that the financial situation was never that dire.

Mr. Watt asked the union officers how many of them had been members of Local 100 when it last lost its checkoff right, and about two dozen of them stood. "Do we have anything to be scared of?" he called.

"No," they replied, joined by less-senior officers. "We're not gonna be scared; we're gonna be determined," Mr. Watt advised them.

Three union officials contended that the loss of automatic dues deduction presented an opportunity to unite members, dispelling some of the acrimony created by the strike penalties, a contract deal that was rejected by members before virtually identical terms were awarded in arbitration, and a bitter election campaign that resulted in Mr. Toussaint gaining a third term but with just 45 percent of the vote in a five-man race last December.

'Make It More Powerful'

Local 100 staffer Rachel LaForest said the greater contact with individual members that was being forced on the union presented "a chance to build Local 100 into a more powerful and [fearsome] machine than it ever has been."

Brian Clarke, a vice president in Local 100's Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority Division, noted that those most inclined to quarrel with union policies also tended to clash with their NYC Transit bosses, and so they had a particular interest in making sure the union maintained its ability to service members.

"For the most part, your chronic complainers out there are the ones who really need to pay their dues," he emphasized.

Curtis Tate, a vice president in the union's Rapid Transit Operations Division, declared, "We're gonna sign 'em up by any means necessary. When the bad guys are at the door, waiting to come in your house to do you harm, to do your family harm, that's when we stop fighting among ourselves."

Quinn Defends Strike

The three mayoral hopefuls who spoke expressed support for Local 100, but only Ms. Quinn, who said, "I think you made the right move," asserted that the strike had been justified.

Noting that her grandfather had been a trolley car and bus driver who was one of the early members of the TWU, Ms. Quinn argued that it was time to "put the strike behind us and move out of the punitive and penalty stage."

Congressman Weiner referred to the way that the middle class has struggled nationally in recent years and emphasized that the gains made by unions benefit even those who are not part of organized labor.

Borough President Carrion dismissed the harsh media treatment that Mr. Toussaint and his members received for the strike, saying, "If you don't do anything, nobody will criticize you. The thing is to ultimately do what's right for the progress of American families."