PAYING DUES FOR TWU'S LOSS

Paying Dues for TWU's Loss

Transport Workers Union Local 100's chances of having dues check-off rights restored seem greatly improved by an Appellate Division ruling three weeks ago barring the Bloomberg administration from further intervention in the case. Judging by the union's internal operations lately, relief would not come a moment too soon.

Although the union's leaders claim they have set up mechanisms under which about 80 percent of the rank and file is making dues payments despite the lack of automatic payroll deduction - the penalty levied effective June 1 for the three-day transit strike two years ago - internal critics have questioned the efficiency of those mechanisms.

Several of them have claimed that they were improperly declared to be members in bad standing because of nonpayment or partial payment of dues when in fact they were up to date. Such a designation makes them ineligible to vote in elections for union representatives.

Some of those critics - and not without justification - suspect that Local 100 President Roger Toussaint has targeted them and their supporters for exclusion from ballot lines and voting eligibility as he tries to restore his control over the union after gaining election a year ago despite getting just 45 percent of the vote in a five-way race.

Those suspicions were exacerbated by a recent election for Queens vice chairman of the union's Private Lines Division in which one losing candidate claimed that many workers at his College Point Depot never received ballots. He contended this cost him any chance of winning the post.

One Bus Operator at the depot told this newspaper's Ari Paul that his being erroneously listed as behind on dues payments and therefore deemed to be in bad standing was something simpler than a political conspiracy. "I just think they're incompetent," he said of those handling dues collection.

If that is the true reason, what he views as bumbling may be due to how thinly stretched union staff is since the loss of dues income forced Local 100 to cut staff and services. That could be ameliorated by restoring dues check-off. The time has certainly come, considering that the union is beginning its seventh month without that right; in contrast, check-off was restored after four months the last time the penalty was imposed, and that was for an 11-day strike in 1980.

Once that right is restored, bringing with it a return to normalcy, it will be easier to distinguish human error from political mischief.