Razzle Dazzle
Roger Down the Rabbit Hole

By RICHARD STEIER

A month after Transport Workers Union Local 100 could have had its automatic dues check-off rights restored by a judge, the union still hasn't filed a legal petition. While this might seem to be a matter of some urgency, Local 100 President Roger Toussaint's September itinerary seemed to reflect a different priority: so many scores to settle, so little time.

There was the shop steward at a Brooklyn bus depot who was removed without explanation, and the candidate for a Manhattan steward's post who had the election canceled a day before it was to be held. There were two Local 100 Maintenance of Way Division chairmen who were denied lists of which of their members were not up to date on dues payments.

Any notion that this flurry of activity at Mr. Toussaint's direction was an attempt to make up for a sleepy August could be dispelled by his actions during that month: he threatened the union's Power Division chairman with the loss of release time for allegedly leaving an injured worker susceptible to manipulation by treacherous New York City Transit officials, and called off an election for a vice president in Local 100's Private Lines Division, contending he had the right to appoint someone to the post.

A GROUCHO KIND OF MARXIST: Some of Roger Toussaint's media critics have denounced him for Marxist views, but his high-handed conduct lately has been less reminiscent of Karl than of Groucho satirizing a dictator in 'Duck Soup.'

Each Move Had Political Component

In every case, Mr. Toussaint moved to thwart political foes, by denying them the right to be leaders or choose them at the shop or division level, or to make sure that those who support them remain eligible to vote by paying their dues.

Dues payments are the lifeblood of a union's fiscal health, and automatic payroll deduction is the vein through which that blood flows without undue exertion. But a reduction in that blood, while unhealthy for the union, is not necessarily unhealthy for its leader's political future, if those withholding it are the wrong donors. Tony Utano, a chairman in the union's Maintenance of Way Division, told this newspaper's Ari Paul last week that he believed Mr. Toussaint had refused to provide him with a list of which division members were not current on dues payments to prevent him from alerting them to the political consequences of their nonpayment.

That is, to be sure, a cynical theory. It is hard to dismiss, however, because there is no other obvious explanation for why the union leader would not be providing the list at a time when Local 100 needs every dues payment it can get.

Based on figures that union officials have not updated since the end of May, roughly half of Local 100's 34,000 members agreed to have their dues covered through some alternative payment method, primarily from personal bank accounts or credit cards.

The lost income from the other 17,000, however, has forced a number of cutbacks recently, from a 10-percent cut in the pay for union officials to the layoff of some staff - most notably Local 100's safety director, Frank Goldsmith. Given ongoing concerns about environmental contamination and track safety problems that have not abated even after the deaths of two Track Workers in separate incidents in April, the position of safety director is not one that would ordinarily be considered expendable, but for the moment the union seems ready to live with the vacancy.

And matters would be even worse except that Local 100 has reportedly delayed paying some bills and has gotten its international union, the TWU of America, to forgo per-capita dues payments while it is without check-off rights.

Wants MTA, AG's Support

So why didn't Mr. Toussaint have his attorneys rush in at the first opportunity to have dues check-off reinstated? The word is that he'd like to approach the court in tandem with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the State Attorney General's Office, which successfully sought the loss of automatic dues deduction as a primary penalty for the three-day transit strike in December 2005, and new Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is taking a hard line.

Management officials claim, however, that the only holdup is that Local 100 has not put forward a formal proposal for them to examine.

There is reported to be some language that state officials want Mr. Toussaint to utter in court - beyond the required admission that it is illegal for public employees to strike under the Taylor Law - that he is said to object to; it's not clear whether it would require him to admit being naughtier than he believes he was or to promise not to do it again if check-off was restored.

But while the parties hash out what portion of humble pie Mr. Toussaint must eat and with what condiments, he seems determined to use the crisis to either send a message to his internal enemies or reduce the number of them in both leadership positions and among those who are eligible to vote for union officers.

Having last year - when he gained a third term but with just 45 percent of the vote in a five-man race - lost 15 percent of the support he enjoyed when he was first re-elected in 2003, Mr. Toussaint has two options for political survival: strengthen his standing among the rank and file or let his opponents weaken themselves through disenfranchisement. His best tool for regaining support is a contract negotiation that is 15 months away, and so for the moment he seems to be focusing on chipping away at his opposition.

The tactics he has used are antithetical to the platform on which he rode into office nearly seven years ago, promising a more democratic union that gave its members a greater say in operations.

Risks Political Backlash

Using appointment powers that he claims are given to him under Local 100's bylaws - and which his opponents say are questionable at best and a violation of the spirit of union democracy - would seem to be risky politically. Even those members who do not belong to the divisions where some elections are nullified and others aren't even held might wonder what has happened to Mr. Toussaint's lofty ideals.

His machinations have led even some of those who long hailed him as a special kind of labor leader to wonder whether he has sacrificed his vision in an attempt to preserve and consolidate his power, and whether his intolerance for dissent has undermined him by antagonizing many of those who were vital to the union's operation.

As one of those people observed recently, "There's sort of a universal with Roger: if you were his friend and went against him, you're on his spit-list forever."

Going against him doesn't require a Shakespearean betrayal: it is far more likely to be a public criticism than a knife in the back that will draw exile from the Local 100 leader's kingdom. It is a quality he shares with, of all people, Rudy Giuliani, as much as it might pain Mr. Toussaint to be compared to someone who has devoted his own gifts primarily towards advancing himself in the world.

Mr. Toussaint's political future does not seem as limited as Mr. Giuliani's had become by Sept. 10, 2001, but it is not clear that there is a transforming event around the bend that could revitalize him, either.

Combative Nature

Like the former Mayor, he is better at fighting battles than building bridges, an inclination that leaves a thin margin for error and a long line of people not inclined to be charitable if you fail.

When he bargained his first contract as Local 100 president in 2002, Mr. Toussaint was undercut by several actions by then-TWU of America President Sonny Hall and then faced organized opposition to the terms he reached, led by former allies with whom he'd had a falling-out. Rather than frame the 60-40 vote in favor of the contract as a ringing endorsement from his members under those circumstances, he asserted that too much of his rank and file had let itself be gulled by his opponents and made clear that he was unhappy with the margin of victory.

That reaction made it pretty clear that he would not be looking to make peace with his opposition. He won re-election at the end of 2003 by the same margin that the contract was approved.

Mr. Toussaint made no apparent effort to reach out to the disaffected within Local 100, even as it became increasingly obvious that negotiations on a new contract in 2005 were going to be contentious and so the threat of a strike would be less credible if the union appeared divided.

As the contract deadline loomed, a controversy arose over the reported sale of the union's longtime headquarters a few blocks west of Lincoln Center. When John Samuelsen, an activist Track Inspector who had been one of his supporters, asked that the transaction be tabled until the contract was settled, Mr. Toussaint responded by stripping him of his staff position at Local 100.

Move Backfired

This proved to be a glaring political miscalculation, one that arguably hurt the union leader even more than the unsatisfying outcome of the transit strike. When Mr. Toussaint, disdaining the opportunity to have the deadlock with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority resolved in arbitration, ordered his members to walk out, his international union issued a directive criticizing the decision and asking that union members be given the opportunity to vote on management's final offer. Undercut by his parent union while being castigated by elected officials, business leaders and the media for threatening the Christmas shopping season, Mr. Toussaint cut short the strike after reaching a tentative contract with the help of a three-man mediation panel.

Besides 10.5 percent in raises over 37 months, it contained other benefit improvements - particularly in the area of health care - that he would later argue made it superior to subsequent contracts reached by municipal unions.

But it contained a major concession: it required employees to pay 1.5 percent of their earnings toward their health care - the first time they had to share in the cost of basic coverage. That was bound to be a tough sell to his members, who believed a primary reason for striking was to rebuff management demands for givebacks, and it became harder when Mr. Samuelsen assumed a particularly prominent role lobbying against ratification of the deal. With more than 22,000 ballots cast, the pact was rejected by a seven-vote margin in January 2006.

Misread Message

Mr. Toussaint acknowledged that it was a humbling experience, but once again he opted not to reach out to his in-house critics, insisting that the vote did not offer a true reflection that only half his members supported him. He was right, but not in a way he would have wanted: when he stood for re-election last year, just 45 percent voted for him in the five-candidate race.

Although that was 10 points better than his nearest challenger, the outcome suggested Mr. Toussaint was vulnerable if his opposition was less divided for the next Local 100 election. His political vulnerability has not softened him, however, and some past allies claim it is not in Mr. Toussaint's nature to seek peace with those with whom he has crossed swords.

Any reaching out he has done since then has been to try to slice away at their power. In mid-May, Mr. Samuelsen was chosen to be the shop steward by a group of colleagues based on the R line in Brooklyn's Sunset Park section. Mr. Toussaint notified Local 100's Track Division recording secretary that Mr. Samuelsen was disqualified from taking that position by virtue of a letter he had co-signed which he claimed discouraged members from paying union dues.

Spun Foes' Rhetoric

The letter had actually urged members to pay their dues while Local 100's check-off rights were suspended, but said their obligation to do so came "with the understanding that the union's leadership is not abusing the union's finances."

That caveat did not require Mr. Toussaint to present spending records as a condition for members to pay their dues voluntarily. Its primary impact was to take a gratuitous swipe at the Local 100 leader, as did other passages in it that urged Mr. Toussaint to "end his spending spree" and accused him of giving staff jobs to political supporters at a heavy cost to the union.

And so notwithstanding Mr. Toussaint's attempts to spin it, it was hard to imagine that any reasonable party would conclude that a letter telling members to pay their dues was actually a signal not to do so. His decision to deny Mr. Samuelsen a position that his colleagues elected him to seemed to be his way of saying, "Spite me? Spite you!"

That letter was again invoked three weeks ago to disqualify a candidate for another shop steward post in Manhattan, in this case Greg McDonald, a Structure Maintainer seeking to represent colleagues at the West 14th St. station along the Sixth Ave. line. Mr. McDonald said he believed he further incurred Mr. Toussaint's wrath by directing members to a Web site that lists the salaries for Local 100 staffers.

Defining His Terms

There is a certain "Through the Looking Glass" quality to the position taken by Mr. Toussaint that the subliminal message of the offending letter was to tell members to ignore its explicit advice to keep paying their dues. In Lewis Carroll's novel, Humpty Dumpty informed Alice, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

For many Local 100 members, the past bickering between Mr. Toussaint and his opponents - including the charge by many former allies that he had forsaken his promises and ideals once in office - amounted to inside baseball that had little relevance to them. Last year's election vote, however, indicated that Mr. Toussaint's governing style had begun to grate on them once he failed to meet their contract expectations.

And so there is a real question as to whether Mr. Toussaint's rank-and-file support will be further eroded by what seem to be arbitrary rulings disqualifying his critics from holding union office or conferring upon himself the power to fill vacancies rather than leaving them to the vote of the affected members.

The answer may hinge on how well he does in next year's contract bargaining; union members have been known to forgive sins far greater than crusty and domineering personalities if their leaders came through with strong wage packages.

Not Bigger Than Union

But Mr. Toussaint, who in the past criticized Mr. Hall for being more intent on preserving power than improving members' lives, has begun to stir doubts about whether he equates his members' welfare with his own control of Local 100, never mind the means by which he maintains it.

An extended delay in getting dues check-off rights restored may prompt even some of his supporters to wonder if they are being snookered if union services are further curtailed because of the loss of income. And a transparent attempt by Local 100's leader to pare the voting rolls in large numbers by disqualifying those who haven't paid dues might also make them view the delay as precisely the cynical move - sacrificing union income to purge his political foes - that Mr. Utano claims it is.

Other labor leaders before Mr. Toussaint - even some with splintered opposition - have repeated Humpty Dumpty's great and irrevocable fall when they confused re-election with a mandate to shelve democracy when it proved inconvenient and made up the rules as they went along.

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