TWU struggle
Are workers who strike 'criminals'?
By Milt Neidenberg
New York
On Dec. 16 a tentative settlement was reached between the
Metropolitan Transit Authority and Tranport Workers Union Local
100. Local 100's 47-member Executive Committee ratified the
agreement with 75 percent approving.
There will be much discussion on the merits of the
settlement among the 34,000 members before a vote is taken.
It's a three-year contract with a one-time thousand-dollar
bonus for the first year, followed by a 3-percent annual
increase based on productivity increases for the next two
years. Health care and pension benefits will be better
protected. An overhaul of the harsh disciplinary practices and
provisions that the MTA contribute to a new child-care fund
round out the highlights of the tentative agreement.
TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, who signed the
tentative agreement, characterized it as modest. He is right,
since it was achieved under the most difficult conditions.
What must be thoroughly discussed is how this tentative
agreement was reached. It can only be described this way: At
the bargaining table, MTA President Peter Kalikow pointed a
loaded gun directly at the head of Local 100 President Roger
Toussaint. The gun had been handed to Kalikow by a shadowy
figure in black robes who never attended a single bargaining
session.
This figure is Jules L. Spodek, a State Supreme Court judge
in Brooklyn, NY. About 48 hours before the contract expired,
Spodek issued an injunction against Local 100, whose membership
had democratically voted to withhold their labor if necessary
to get a decent contract. The workers made this thoughtful
decision to defend their union against a powerful array of
bankers, investors and political conspirators who were
determined to protect their financial interests at the workers'
expense.
Violates the Constitution
The gun Spodek handed the MTA is the Taylor Law. Passed in
1967 under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, the Taylor Law criminalizes
public-sector unions each time they seek to withhold their
labor to win a decent wage and benefit contract. The law
includes huge penalties, like limitless fines for unions.
Under the Taylor Law, workers are fined two days' pay for
each day they are on strike. The law provides for additional
penalties, such as prison terms for members who "instigate,
encourage or condone" a strike.
This is clearly a violation of free speech rights under the
U.S. Constitution's First and 13th Amendments. The latter
eliminated involuntary servitude and slave labor after the
Civil War.
So what, says one person--a judge--who has the backing of
the ruling class and its repressive institutions. According to
the rulers, the workers are criminals if they decide to strike
for a decent contract.
Remember, these transit workers labor around the clock
through bitter cold and stifling heat, working in the most
dangerous, dirty and stressful conditions, providing safe,
efficient service to over 7 million bus and subway riders
daily.
Recently two union members were killed within 48 hours. Four
have died in the last six months. It's all due to speedup,
unsafe conditions, and cuts in work crews.
The president of the 34,000 "criminals" of Transit Workers
Local 100 is Roger Toussaint, a Trinidadian by birth.
Two-thirds of the union's members are workers of color, with a
heavy representation of African-Americans and of Caribbean
immigrants. At the union hall, TWU women and men have said that
racism is a dynamic in the contract dispute.
Toussaint began work as a track cleaner and maintenance
worker. He rose to become president of the union. He chaired
the union's Track Maintenance Unit starting in 1995. In 1998
the MTA fired him because of his militant leadership. He was
reinstated in 2001, following his election as president.
Across the bargaining table from Toussaint and the other TWU
leaders was the MTA's Peter S. Kalikow, packing the Taylor law.
Kalikow's personal fortune includes assets of over $400
million. (Forbes, May 2002) His family holdings, which exceed
his own, came from wheeling and dealing in Wall Street
real-state development. Kalikow has broad and intimate
connections with the banking establishment, which has a
substantial stake in getting loans paid off.
Both the union and the city comptroller are calling for the
MTA to open its books. There is a growing suspicion that MTA
management is covering up surpluses to justify demands for both
concessions from the union and a fare hike.
Rockefeller was New York governor when the MTA was created
in 1967 by combining the Long Island Railroad, Metro North, the
Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and the New York City
Transit Authority. It is a transportation monopoly born out of
a Rockefeller/J.P. Morgan plan to control the flow of huge
amounts of borrowed money. The MTA, a politically appointed
board, has the legal standing to sell bonds, which incur debt,
without oversight from the public and the unions.
The MTA is behind every fare hike, causing hardship to
workers and the poor whose only transportation is subways and
buses. The fares that mass-transit riders pay make up 54
percent of operating funds, contributing more to keeping the
system going than fares in any other major U.S. city.
With the Taylor law at its disposal, the MTA had been
stonewalling the union and taken it to the brink--the Dec. 15
contract expiration date. Since last spring the union had been
asking that bargaining begin. At the time, the MTA offered zero
pay raises for the first year of the new contract and possible
wage increases in the second and third year, contingent on
productivity increases.
The MTA demanded that workers pay a $22 monthly increase for
health insurance and a 2 to 3 percent increase in out-of-pocket
pension fund payments. Retirees would lose their prescription
benefits.
In contrast, the union demanded a 6-percent annual increase
for each of three years, no out-of-pocket health-care or
pension costs, better working conditions, and changes in the
discipline procedures. Currently there are over 16,000
disciplinary actions on the books.
These earlier proposals can be compared with the tentative
agreement.
Gov. George Pataki's early threat to call in the National
Guard and his statement that a strike would be "a horrendous
act of disloyalty to the people of New York" had added fuel to
the fire. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had even sought penalties
harsher than those under the Taylor Law. He asked for $1
million in fines against the union on the first day of the
strike, doubling each day, and $25,000 from each worker,
doubling each day. Would these attacks and the intransigent
position the MTA took at the negotiating table provoke a
strike?
The MTA-Pataki-Bloomberg partnership has heaved a sigh of
relief now that the Toussaint leadership signed on to the
tentative settlement. They were afraid that their racist,
hard-line approach would backfire. They had publicly
criminalized the TWU members for their reasonable efforts to
get a decent contract and leveled wild charges that the rank
and file were "urban terrorists" simply because they voted to
give the Toussaint leadership a strike authorization as a last
resort.
As the final hours of the Dec. 15 expiration date
approached, the anti-union rhetoric cooled down considerably. A
deal was in the making.
Target the Taylor Law
New York City's million-fold labor movement and the subway-
and bus-riding public should be outraged at the MTA and the
shameless and arrogant display by the billionaire parasites.
The tentative agreement should be viewed as a phase in labor's
overall struggle to get economic and social justice.
The Taylor Law is still on the books. Without an organized,
sustained and militant campaign to overturn this slave-labor
law, the same loaded gun will be held on the next set of
public-sector unions that seek a decent contract for their
members.
Whatever the final vote of Local 100 members, the
slave-labor Taylor Law must become the issue of the day. It is
not enough to lobby for change. It must be overturned.
Only a mass campaign that enlists tens of thousands in the
street can bring this about. Public- sector workers must be
freed from the punishing restraints denying them their legal
and constitutional right to withhold their labor. The splendid
turnout of thousands of workers and allies on the eve of the
tentative settlement could be the spark for the demise of the
infamous Taylor law.
Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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