There seems to be an effort under way from some quarters to give the Toussaint leadership credit for our 1999 strike movement, when they deserve no such credit at all. First, in their coverage of the beginning of contract negotiations, Newsday newspaper (Sept. 20) reported that “Toussaint is widely regarded as one of the union’s most militant leaders in decades, having pressed for a strike-authorization vote during contract talks in 1999 ...” Now The Chief spreads the same fiction, saying that “as a member of New Directions [ND], the union’s insurgent caucus, Mr. Toussaint sought to hold a strike authorization vote on the eve of the previous contract’s expiration ...”
The truth is that while RTW was campaigning for the need to strike throughout the contract campaign, ND refused to come out in favor of a strike until the last moment, when thousands of workers were already chanting “Strike, Strike!“ Then, at the mass membership assemblies held on December 14, ND did hesitantly produce a motion to authorize the Executive Board to call a strike if it wished. This was a way of appearing to favor a strike without really being for one, since everyone knew the Executive Board was dominated by the James Gang and would never call a strike.
While ND was pushing a motion that left control in the hands of the James Gang, RTW knew that the only way forward was for the ranks to take control. So in the afternoon mass meeting we moved a motion that ordered a strike to begin immediately after the contract expired. Our motion gave the Executive Board nothing but the duty to carry out the decision.
Given the choice between the two motions, the thousands of workers present by-passed ND’s proposal and adopted our motion unanimously by acclamation not once, but twice! While the James Gang had already betrayed us, it was the responsibility of the NDers on the Executive Board, who already commanded the most important divisions, to take the lead in organizing the strike. Instead, when James put forward his sellout contract at the Executive Board meeting that night, not one of the NDers argued that the workers’ mass meeting had already declared a strike and that the Executive Board had no right to do anything other than set about organizing it. While most of the NDers voted against the contract, they went along with the James Gang’s flouting of the members’ will and allowed our strike movement to be defeated.
RTW is proud of the role we played in the 1999 struggle. But the most important thing about that fight is the lessons it can teach us for our current struggle. In the course of the 1999 contract campaign transit workers became convinced of the need to strike, even in the face of threats from Giuliani, the courts and cops. But the contract campaign was not used to prepare the membership to strike. Division meetings remained talk shops which few members attended because they knew they would not have any power to debate, decide on or organize the struggle. Most importantly, the campaign did not see the emergence of a new militant leadership that was prepared to take the struggle forward in the face of a sellout. (For more on the true history of the 1999 contract campaign and its lessons, see Showdown in New York Transit, in Proletarian Revolution magazine, No. 60.)