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Change Needed At TWU

To the Editor:

I am a current member of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 Executive Board, and am a candidate for administrative vice president on the Take Back Our Union slate in the current election. I have, unfortunately, seen the once-great TWU Local 100 go downhill because the majority of my fellow executive board members do not have the courage to stand up to Roger Toussaint and Ed Watt, or they are blind supporters of that duo because they owe their union-paid jobs to them.

This is a terrible situation for democracy within our union, but it will change when TBOU takes over the leadership of TWU Local 100.

Roger Toussaint has always dealt with dissent and disagreement in a dictatorial manner. Anyone with a union-paid job or on release time from management who dared to vote against a Toussaint edict was immediately fired and sent back to their picked job.

This kind of heavy-handed nonsense has led to the great losses in- flicted upon Local 100 members in recent years by the Toussaint regime, including this most recent contract binding arbitration disaster.

Our executive board meetings are still chaired by Roger Toussaint, who is no longer president (he is working full time for the International Union), while Acting President Curtis Tate is there but rarely participates. Tate has been silent at the e-board on incredibly important matters affecting our members. He has stood by silently and watched Toussaint and Watt make a complete mockery of our union.

We as union brothers and sisters have been lied to, dictated to, and shown no respect from our own union leadership for far too long now.

We believe the members want their union back. The members want a leadership that respects them, listens to them and believes that the members are the union, not the other way around.

ANGEL GIBOYEAUX Executive Board Member,

TWU Local 100