Solidarity with NYC transit union

Was there ever any doubt? The bosses will use every weapon and every dirty trick to try to beat back worker solidarity. The attacks by the courts, the capitalist politicians and the media on New York City’s transit workers and their organization, Transport Workers Union Local 100, have made it crystal clear.

The bosses’ biggest weapon in this conflict is the capitalist state—the police, the courts, the jails and specifically the anti-labor Taylor Law, which outlaws strikes by public sector workers in New York State. From day one of last winter’s negotiations, the threat of $1 million a day in fines, jail for union leaders, two days’ pay for each day of the strike for individual workers and other penalties hung over the heads of the union and its 34,000 members.

Now the courts have jumped in against the workers. Justice Theodore Jones sentenced TWU leader Roger Toussaint to 10 days in jail, fined the TWU local $2.5 million and stopped automatic check-off of union dues—a particularly damaging step meant to bring the union down.

In December, faced with a bad offer from an intransigent Metropolitan Transport ation Authority and a demand for pension cuts that went beyond the MTA’s legal authority, the workers heroically confronted the Taylor Law and struck from Dec. 20 to Dec. 22, effectively closing down the city during Xmas shopping. They reminded the world that without labor, everything stops, even in the home of Wall Street. It was fitting that in this period, when the face of the working class is changing, a union with so many members who are African American or from the Caribbean or Latin America, both women and men, would demonstrate the strength of the working class right in the center of finance capital.

It was also typical that media and politicians, specifically New York’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would be so quick to use epithets like “thugs” and “greedy” to characterize the mostly Black union leadership, especially Toussaint.

The strike ended with an improved contract. It succeeded in stopping a two-tier pension system that hurt new workers. But for the MTA corporate/banking fraternity, there are no contracts, no rules they can’t break to serve their class interests.

New York Gov. George Pataki then pulled a double-cross, refusing to honor the promise to repay $131.7 million in pension overpayments to the workers. When—partly influenced by Pataki’s betrayal—workers rejected the contract by only seven votes out of 22,461, the MTA bosses tried to take advantage of the situation to reopen the contract talks and insist on binding arbitration, something usually damaging to union interests.

On April 17 the union reported its members had taken a new vote. Some 71 percent this time accepted the December agreement, which amounts to a rejection of binding arbitration. The MTA cutthroats then announced they would refuse to honor the December agreement, thus hurling a challenge at the union membership.

The MTA board, the courts, Pataki and Bloomberg believe they have the upper hand. But the struggle is unfolding in an atmosphere heated by the magnificent upsurge of 12 million undocumented immigrant workers, who are planning a boycott and strike on May 1.

The New York State AFL-CIO and the New York Central Labor Council have called a rally to support Toussaint and the TWU at Brooklyn Borough Hall at 4 p.m. on April 24. What is needed is for the spirit of the immigrant workers to spread to the entire workforce of New York City and bring out a strong show of support. What the MTA-Pataki-Bloomberg gang need is a big surprise from labor.