“That TWU Local 100 hold a General Membership Meeting by mid-February, 2001, to discuss:
Immediately following the election comes the contract expiration in the Queens, New York, Triboro and Jamaica Private Bus lines. The Liberty Lines contract expires on Feb. 28. Also, the MTA chose the week after the election to announce the planned replacement of all token booth clerks by fare-card machines and the elimination of 237 clerk positions by attrition: the MTA claims there will be no layoffs, and current clerks will get other duties. Further, it turns out that the MTA is choking off funds to the Health Benefit Trust, claiming that the current contract allows them to do so. If the HBT goes bankrupt, we could soon either lose benefits or pay much more out of pocket.
Private Lines workers are in 3 unions, Amalgamated Transit Union Locals 1179 and 1181 and TWU Local 100. The employers here, as elsewhere, are planning to auction off the Lines to the highest bidders. The latter would then have an incentive to cut wages and benefits to get their money back. A major Private Lines workers demand is thus to retain their entire work-force, wages, benefits and improvements regardless of employer, an “Employee Protection Clause.” Because Private Lines workers are not public employees, they are not subject to the Taylor Law – they can legally strike.
Indeed, as in past contract fights, the Private Lines workers have voted for strike authorization. Their leaders, in the case of Local 100 mostly holdovers from the James and Hall cliques, are sitting on the strike authorizations, keeping the membership in the dark. To mobilize the ranks, Toussaint, Watt and other ND officials should call All-Union and Local-wide rallies, to show real working-class solidarity, and to counteract Private Line union bureaucrats’ claims that MTA employees don’t give a damn about “their” workers.
Toussaint, on p. C of the 12/31/00 “TWU Express,” says “We will mobilize across the unions involved, expanding our negotiating committee to involve hundreds of members,” “mobilize the rest of our Local in support of Private Lines members,” and “make sure that our members will not scab in the event of a strike.” We should support real mobilizations in support of the Private Lines workers and against scabbing. The new Local 100 leadership also says they want general membership meetings: what better time and reason to hold one than now given the Private Lines fight, as well as the MTA’s attacks on station clerk jobs and the HBT? If Toussaint and Co. are serious about their program, they will welcome initiatives from Divisions and the EB to mandate an immediate general membership meeting.
At such a meeting, the ranks could discuss how to prevent scabbing. It requires organizing mass overtime refusal on MTA subways and busses. And it means building Mass Militant Picket Lines: call all transit workers out to picket, let no affected routes roll! A real fighting leadership could mobilize the Local to face down the employers, the Mayor and the cops. That’s the winning way to put “pressure on the Mayor’s office and the City Council,” not, as Toussaint suggests, “visiting these politicians,” – as though they were the friends of the working class, not Wall Street’s enforcers!
Toussaint and Co.’s response to the planned elimination of token clerk jobs is joint work with representatives of the communities and “riding public” to pressure the MTA. James and Hall of course said the same thing. This usually meant lobbying with Republican and Democratic capitalist politicians. That is, don’t fight, vote!
In any case, the “riding public” are mostly working class, like us. Our power is not to petition capitalist politicians, but to withhold our labor. In this TWU Local 100 is uniquely able to show the way forward. If ND is for real about uniting to fight, they will rally Local 100 members in the streets to pressure the city’s union leaders to prepare joint strike action against MTA cutbacks and other attacks from the capitalists and their government. Those ND members who claim to be socialist opponents of the bosses’ Democratic and Republican parties should support the above program.
Toussaint says, “we will fight like hell to prevent” the MTA’s cuts in HBT funding and that “We will ... [organize] members to let management know these cuts are immoral, that we will not accept further reductions ... This will be a big fight ...” Some ND union officials are even suggesting a contract re-opener. And why not? If Willie James could call a contract re-opener in ‘96 for bad reasons, we can do it for good ones. But a serious, honest union leadership would openly tell the ranks the truth: if we re-open the contract, we must be prepared to strike, or the MTA will slap us down and take even more. Striking is serious and scary business, even when it’s legal, but the way to mobilize and deal with the members’ justified fears is to start discussing and preparing now to strike, when we still have time. And if we mobilize beforehand as outlines earlier in this article, we’ll be prepared to wage and win the strike which will inevitably come one day.