NYC transit workers fight slave-labor Taylor Law

The following is excerpted from the book “Low-Wage Capitalism,” a Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the U.S. working class by Fred Goldstein, published in the fall of 2008. Beginning with our July 1 issue, Workers World has been running excerpts from Part 3, “Lessons from the Past for Future Struggles.” The wide range of struggles covered, from the 1930s to the present, shows the capacity of the U.S. working class to engage in militant struggle at great sacrifice. The willingness of the rank-and-file workers to fight back against the anti-labor offensive of the last 30 years shows that the decline in the labor movement was not inevitable. This week’s excerpt gives another concrete example of militant struggle just five years ago.

For information about the book, visit www.lowwagecapitalism.com.

2005: Transit workers, New York

This argument and historical precedent also apply to the New York City transit strike of bus and subway workers, which had national significance because it was carried out at the center of power of Wall Street and because it was an attempt to draw a line against concessions. The workers were up against New York State’s Taylor Law, which forbids strikes by public employees.

Meeting such a challenge takes great effort. There are great risks and any such struggle must be well prepared and well grounded in the support of the workers, because it inevitably involves coming up against the capitalist state. But it begins with a readiness and determination of the leadership to resist as much as possible when the occasion arises.

In December 2005 the occasion was forced upon Transport Workers Union Local 100 in New York City by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, an authority set up by New York State to watch over the interests of bondholders. The union leaders, under Roger Toussaint, and the rank and file were prepared to stand firm against the MTA’s demands, despite the almost certain risk of harsh penalties. The two-and-a-half-day strike pitted the 33,000 members of TWU Local 100, who are 70 percent Black, Latino/a, or Asian, against the forces of Wall Street, the governor, the mayor of New York, the courts, and the hostile capitalist media. It had national significance precisely because it was a challenge to the labor-hating, racist ruling class in the heart of their financial center and because the union was bucking a decades-long national trend of concessions by the labor movement.

The workers were being persecuted under an internal system of company discipline, to the point where one out of every three workers had been “written up” in the prior year. The MTA was moving to eliminate and combine jobs. Working conditions, especially on the subway tracks, were harsh and unhealthy. The workers were chafing under a general atmosphere of harassment and disrespect.

As the contract expiration neared, the MTA suddenly demanded a two-tier system of retirement benefits — tripling the contribution extracted from newly hired workers to 6 percent from 2 percent — and an extension of the retirement age from 55 to 62. The MTA said this was non-negotiable. The leadership was confronted with a stark situation — concessions or a strike. The rank and file were overwhelmingly ready to strike and the leadership body voted to strike by a large majority.

The workers voted to strike in the face of draconian sanctions under the Taylor Law: fines for each worker of two days’ pay for each day on strike, possible fines for the union of a million dollars a day, and loss of dues check-off rights.

The strike ended after three days in a limited victory and a mixed result for the union. But the union won a victory in that the MTA had to back off from the two-tier pension system, the fundamental issue of principle. The workers got a 10.5 percent raise over three years, maternity stipends, a paid holiday for Martin Luther King Day, plus a pension refund of thousands of dollars for nearly two-thirds of the members. In return for the MTA taking the two-tier system off the table, the compromise was a 1.5 percent contribution by all the workers to the health care fund.

[The settlement was initially defeated by seven votes and later passed overwhelmingly — F.G.] In reality, the overwhelming factor in any compromise forced on the union was the refusal of the city’s AFL-CIO labor leadership to bring to bear the power of the organized working class.

These leaders offered symbolic support but failed to react to the serious crisis for the TWU created by the MTA. The crisis required broadening the struggle in order to have a significant impact on the outcome. Local 100 was defending not only its own union position but that of the labor movement in the city. Instead, the labor leadership acted as an instrument to transmit pressure against the union to end the strike and return to class peace.

Toussaint declared from the outset that the union would defy the demand for two-tier pension payments. The defiance was put in terms of standing up against the national trend of concessions. Furthermore, he made clear that Local 100 would not be party to setting a two-tier precedent that could then be imposed on all the municipal unions in the city.

The same day that the court imposed a $1-million-a-day fine on the union, Toussaint said, “There is a higher calling than the law. That is justice and equality.” He invoked the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, both of whom had defied racist laws: “If Rosa Parks had answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would instead be at the back of the bus.”

The union also showed that the MTA itself was in violation of the Taylor Law. Under the law, the MTA was authorized to bargain only over “salaries, wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment, provided however, that such term shall not include any benefits provided by or to be provided by a public retirement system. ... No such retirement benefits shall be negotiated pursuant to this article, and any benefits so negotiated shall be null and void.”

Pension benefits for public workers are determined in the New York State Legislature and not by the MTA. Thus, the MTA’s demand for a two-tier pension system or any pension system was a clear violation of the Taylor Law. Considering the circumstances, even though the strike was forced at the last minute, the situation was rife with possibilities for mounting a struggle that could have challenged the enforcement of the Taylor Law, if not the law itself.

The union had a powerful legal basis to declare the MTA in violation of the law with respect to its two-tier pension plan demands. The law itself declared the MTA’s proposal “null and void.” The application of the law to the local could be clearly challenged on that basis.

The union also had a powerful economic argument that it was acting not only on its own behalf, but on behalf of all the unions subject to the Taylor Law. There was a direct material basis for union solidarity.

The strike took place at the height of the winter holiday shopping season. Most major retailers make up to 50 percent of their annual sales during this period. It would not take long before the commercial interests in the city and other employers would feel it.

There was no way the MTA could hire scabs to replace the 33,000 bus and subway workers. The option that had been used by bosses for the past decades to extract concessions was not available.

Despite the hardships it caused, the strike was extremely popular among the masses, for a variety of reasons: the demands for respect on the job, the fight to stop givebacks on pensions, and the fact that the union was 70 percent Black, Latino/a, and Asian in a city with a majority of oppressed people. These factors gave the strike an underlying source of support, despite claims to the contrary by the capitalist media. People in the city walked long distances, crossed bridges, and found ways to get to work.

Arguments can be made about the timing and circumstances of the return to work and the final settlement. But such arguments pale into insignificance in comparison to the need to examine the objective conditions of the strike and the behavior of the broader labor leadership in the city, which became prostrate before the Taylor Law.

In a conference call two days into the strike, with 40 union officials and the Local 100 leadership on the phone, the entire drift of the discussion was to pressure the union to end the strike. Toussaint expressed the tenor of the conversation during the call, when everyone was offering verbal, symbolic support on the one hand and trying to bring an end to the struggle on the other hand.

Toussaint is said to have declared, “I don’t need anyone standing on the sidelines holding my coat; I need someone to take off their coat.”

As we showed earlier, during the United Parcel strike of 1997, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, had strengthened the struggle of the workers by openly pledging $10 million a week to the strike fund of the Teamsters UPS division and its president, Ron Carey. One basic gesture that would have shaken the MTA and the capitalist establishment during the transit workers’ strike and strengthened the hand and the position of Toussaint and the TWU workers would have been a pledge by the New York City Central Labor Council or by a coalition of unions to support the transit workers with funds to carry them through the struggle and to help defray the cost of fines to the union, should they be levied.

Instead of becoming the high priests of compromise, they could have seen the situation as an opportunity to open up a political and propaganda struggle to weaken the ability of the MTA to apply the Taylor Law. They could have mobilized rallies and mass marches and used a variety of creative tactics.

Many legal arguments and illustrations could have been elaborated. For example, by depriving workers of their right to withhold their labor, the Taylor Law nullifies the only leverage workers have in collective bargaining. With its onerous fines and sanctions, the law requires hundreds of thousands of workers to enter negotiations with a gun to their heads. The law makes the bargaining process inherently weighted in favor of the bondholders and other investors. Such a campaign could have made the Taylor Law the issue in the struggle and weakened support for it, limited its application in the strike, and laid the basis for future efforts to overturn it altogether by bringing these arguments to the attention of the masses.

It was incumbent upon the leadership to weigh the political, economic, and tactical advantages of the workers in the struggle against the onerous Taylor Law. It could not be left to Local 100 to fight alone. It required a class-wide approach of the workers in the metropolitan region to counterbalance the forces arrayed against the union. But the relationship of forces between the workers and Wall Street in the struggle against the Taylor Law was never tested. The labor movement fatalistically accepted the legal boundaries established by the bosses on government workers instead of trying to change the legality by facts on the ground.

Of course, not every situation lends itself to an open challenge to anti-labor laws and judicial rulings. But the mindset of any genuine, class-conscious leadership of the workers must always be preparation for challenging the restrictive and repressive aspects of bourgeois legality in favor of extending workers’ rights. Emphasis on lobbying and electing “pro-labor” bourgeois politicians, as a substitute for fighting the bosses, will do nothing at all but sow illusions. The only path is that of mass mobilization in the class struggle.