50% Aren't Paying
Local 100 Has the Withheld Dues Blues

By ARI PAUL

Automatic dues check-off for transit workers temporarily ended on June 1, and half of the union's members have yet to sign up to pay dues on their own.

ROGER TOUSSAINT: Efforts half-successful.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 did not have an updated tally of members who pledged to pay dues last week, but its projected figures showed that it would sign up 17,000 of the 34,000 affected members by last Friday. The union lost the right to have dues deducted from each member's paycheck for at least 90 days as a result of its three-day strike in 2005, which was illegal under the state's Taylor Law.

Alternative Methods

Local 100 is campaigning for members to either have their dues deducted from their checking accounts or to make payments in person or through the mail or Internet. As of May 24, the union had signed up nearly 16,000 members.

Some union members who are unhappy with the leadership see the loss of dues check-off as a chance to make their feelings heard. Flagman Arty Aponte said he would not pay dues voluntarily because he felt there has been too much corruption at Local 100 in his 15 years working for New York City Transit. He declined to offer specifics.

"Until the union gets their act right, I won't do it," he said while on break at the Chambers Street station on the 1,2,3 line.

Trenton Hope, a Station Agent at the City Hall R/W station, signed up to pay dues on his own, he said, because he wanted the union to survive.

Several political opponents of Roger Toussaint, the union's president, advocated that members pay dues on their own.

Wrong Kind of Revenge

"If you're thinking of not paying your dues to get back at Toussaint for the poor contracts he's negotiated or because of the damage he's done to the union, think again," said the April 2007 issue of Rank and File Advocate, a two-page newsletter. "We're going to need a strong union long after Toussaint is gone."

Santos Bartholomew, a conductor on the 7 train, planned to sign up to pay.

"A union is important, no matter how bad it might be," he said. "Without a union, things could get a lot worse than they already are."

Anna Vaquero, a Cleaner at the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge IRT station, had not signed up because the union had not given her material on how to do so in Spanish.

Sees an Opportunity

Local 100 continues to send teams of members to work sites to sign up members to pay dues. Joshua Freeman, a Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who wrote a well-received book on Local 100, said that the loss of dues check-off presented an opportunity for the union to do individual, face-to-face organizing with members. He said that kind of interaction between the rank-and-file membership and union leadership often "gets lost."

He also said that even though Local 100 would lose money in the next few months, it had a financial cushion because it sold its West End Ave. headquarters in 2006.

This is not the first time the state's use of the Taylor Law penalties has stifled Local 100's revenue flow. The union lost automatic dues check-off after its 11-day strike in 1980.

"There was a substantial drop in income, but obviously it was able to survive," Professor Freeman said. "It's a challenge, but not an insurmountable one."