TWU's Voice of Unreason
To an increasing and alarming degree, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint is becoming a parody of the labor leader as petty dictator.

In doing so while lashing out at his growing legion of critics within the union, Mr. Toussaint is also undercutting the moral arguments he has made from the time he first sought office nearly a decade ago and which served as the justification for breaking the law by leading an illegal three-day transit strike in 2005.

The two latest examples of his hypocrisy are both outgrowths of the loss of automatic dues-deduction rights that was one of the penalties for that walkout. Local 100 has just marked 15 months without dues check-off — and still going — while awaiting an appeal of a Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice's ruling last November denying restoration of the right.

This is an extraordinarily long penalty considering that following the 1980 strike, which lasted 11 days, the union got dues check-off restored in court after just over four months without it.

Back then, Local 100's leadership convinced the court by citing financial hardship caused by the loss of dues income. Mr. Toussaint ensured a far-longer court battle when he declined to promise that he would not strike again, and then appealed Justice Bruce Balter's ruling against the union on First Amendment grounds. The issue would seem to pivot on principle rather than practical realities, since no one could realistically believe that Mr. Toussaint could lead another strike when the current Local 100 contract expires next January. That is because he has alienated so much of his rank and file — first by producing an unsatisfactory contract deal at the conclusion of the 2005 strike, then through his governing style since — that if he called another walkout he'd have trouble staffing a picket line.

This is evident by the fact that, at last official report by the union last year, more than half the membership had failed to stay current on dues payments. The problem is so great that three Local 100 activists recently called for members to be allowed to make their outstanding dues payments in installments, saying in a letter published in our Aug. 22 issue that it was a way to "make the best of a bad situation." Those three members — one of whom, Eric Josephson, is vice chair of Local 100's Track Division — publish a newsletter called Revolutionary Transit Worker, but their proposal was well-conceived and reasonable rather than radical. Almost nothing Mr. Toussaint does these days is well-conceived and reasonable, however, and he did not take kindly to their plan. And so Local 100's executive board, apparently at his direction, has just passed a motion stating that any union officer who advocates a form of dues amnesty will be removed from office.

What this means is that Local 100 has taken an absolutist stand against its own officers utilizing their free-speech rights at the same time that it is asking an appeals court to restore dues check-off because the First Amendment covering free speech should protect it from having to rule out another strike.

This is not even the most-harmful stance Local 100 has taken from the standpoint of member interests when it comes to dues holdouts. That award goes to Mr. Toussaint's position in failing to assist a Conductor whom New York City Transit is trying to fire because of problems caused by his suffering from irritable bowel syndrome.

As chronicled by this newspaper's Ari Paul last week, Conductor James Mitchell has been denied $12,000 in sick and disability pay he claims he is entitled to and is being accused by management of taking unexcused absences. He and his lawyer also allege that NYC Transit officials have trumped up charges against him.

The 22-year veteran of the system has gotten no assistance from Local 100, however, because he is $600 in arrears on dues payments. Mr. Mitchell told Mr. Paul that he was too financially strapped to stay current; one union shop steward said that Local 100 does not represent any members who are behind on dues.

One longtime TWU activist, Russ Smith, questioned whether this position didn't violate Federal law governing union obligations to represent members. Even if it doesn't, there is a larger moral issue to consider.

Much of the impetus for the 2005 strike was Mr. Toussaint's insistence that the disciplinary and sick-leave policies of NYC Transit were arbitrary and abusive. It would seem that Mr. Mitchell's case may be another example.

How, then, can Mr. Toussaint argue that the collecting of full dues before representation is provided is a greater imperative for Local 100 than assisting a member who is being done an injustice by management? That is a policy we would expect of an insurance company or a criminal defense lawyer, not of a labor union with Local 100's tradition.

When the Labor Day Parade is held on Saturday, the leaders of the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council should seriously consider taking Mr. Toussaint aside and asking him what he thinks he is doing, while pointing out the effect it is having on a once-proud and strong union.

If he is unwilling to listen to them, he might want to consider the ideals espoused not that long ago by the man he looks at in the mirror, and ask himself whether he really meant those words or they were disposable once they no longer served his interests.