TWU Acts to Remove Union Officers Urging Amnesty on Dues; Toussaint Reacts Angrily To Track Division Activists' Installment Proposal
By ARI PAUL
The executive board of Transport Workers Union Local 100 has passed a motion stating that any union officer advocating dues amnesty will be removed from office, according to one member of the governing body.

ROGER TOUSSAINT: Zero tolerance on dues-arrears.

The executive board member, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, said that Local 100 President Roger Toussaint pushed the motion.

'Don't Want Partial-Paying'

"They don't want anybody partial-paying," the board member said of Mr. Toussaint's rationale. "It disenfranchises the people who paid."

About half the union's membership has fallen into bad standing and lost voting rights since transit workers lost the right to automatic dues check-off June 1, 2007 as a court-mandated punishment for the union's illegal three-day strike in 2005.

The vote came after three Local 100 members who publish the Revolutionary Transit Worker newsletter, including Local 100 Track Division Vice Chair Eric Josephson, proposed a system of dues amnesty in a letter published in this newspaper.

"It would work like this: members in arrears would have to pledge and pay full current monthly dues, plus say, an extra $20 per month," they wrote in the Aug. 22 issue. "They would have to continue this every month until they were up to date. In return, they would immediately return to good standing, with full membership rights to vote, attend meetings, etc. Any who missed a month would fall back into bad standing."

Local 100 spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment on the executive board vote. The board member said that Mr. Toussaint believed that such a plan ran contrary to how unions operated financially.

Mr. Josephson called the board's vote "totalitarian" and said that the union's Track Division members approved a resolution against the measure.