TWU Local 100 members working for Triboro Coach, Queens surface and Jamaica Bus in Queens struck for over seven weeks, in miserably hot and muggy weather. Their dedication and fighting spirit is an example to workers all workers in the region.
The contract they accepted, however, was basically the same offer they rejected by storming out of a meeting on July 14. After 3½ more weeks with no improvement in the bosses’ offer, however, the workers saw no alternative. As many said at the ratification vote, “I just want to get back to work.”
Their previous contract actually expired 19 months earlier, on December 31, 2000. The new one has retroactive pay raises of 4% + 4%, which management had agreed to in March, after a 2-day strike. Another 1% raise will come on Jan. 1, 2003. The new contract will last till March, 2003. The 4 other Private Lines with routes in New York City, some organized by TWU Local 100 and some by ATU locals, had already settled their contracts,, which expired between January and March, 2001.
The Local 100 leadership under President Roger Toussaint had delayed action on the Queens Private Lines workers’ contract till this year, when they held one half-day and one two-day strike. They had never held a rally or other mobilization of the whole Local to support the Private Lines workers’ demands. On June 17, they finally responded to the Private Lines members’ pressure and called this “all-out,” that is, indefinite strike. They held exactly one event billed as Local-wide, a rally hastily called for noon on June 27 at City Hall, when most NYCT workers couldn’t make it. Most of the 1000 or so participants were Private Lines workers. Local 100 gave necessary aid, in strike pay and a money and food drive. NYCT Local 100 members gave generously. The Local 100 leadership bragged that they had done more for the Private Lines strikers than any previous leaders, implying that they’d done all they could. In the absence of a serious, Local-wide mobilization, however, this made strikers feel like TWU charity cases. Further, the failure to mobilize the whole Local prolonged the strike and got a settlement well short of the workers’ demands.
The workers struck for three major demands. They seem to have won one, full funding of their Health Benefit Trust (separate from the MTA’s) with no new or increased payments, or reduced levels of health benefits. Mayor Bloomberg agreed to “advance” the 3 Private Lines over $2 million, to be repaid from productivity cost savings. This may seem like déja vu to NYCT members of TWU, but the City government and the Private Lines owners claim that the cost savings won’t come from workers’ givebacks. Private Lines workers had their suspicions.
Another demand was an Employment Protection Program (EPP) for current Private Lines workers should the City sell the Line franchises to new owners. A genuine EPP would ensure that the current workers, with their wages, pensions, health care, pick jobs and seniority intact, remain with any new owner. In line with this, the workers also demanded a three-year, not a two-year contract. This demand seems to have arisen after the strike started. The Mayor can move to sell the Private Lines franchises in March, 2003. A new two year contract would have expired on Dec. 31. The current Private Lines owners, faced with losing their franchises within three months, would have had no incentive to grant any of their workers’ demands. Now the workers have security – til next March. And their contract will be up almost 4 months after the NYCT contract, instead of about the same time.
The strikers did not win EPP. However, Toussaint and Co. have acclaimed as a victory a resolution favoring EPP, sponsored by the vast majority of City Council members. It’s no such thing. The resolution is non-binding. It merely says that if the City sells the Private Lines franchises, then the Council member sponsors will vote for EPP.
Many Private Lines workers wanted to know: why couldn’t the “veto-proof majority” of City Council sponsors pass a binding EPP instead of this promise? What’s to stop the Council members from ditching the EPP later, claiming an unmanageable deficit? Could Toussaint have pushed the strikers back to work to show his “reliability” to the politicians? As well, Toussaint & Co. ensured that the Private Lines strike didn’t coincide with the building TWU Local 100/NYCT contract fight.
RTW believes that a “No” vote was appropriate on the final offer. We recognize, however, that to vote “No” and stay out, other things being equal, would have gotten the same settlement. The strikers could have waged a public political fight to pressure the Local leadership to organize mass solidarity. But there were no large, influential forces pushing for a Local-wide mobilization: this option, therefore, didn’t look real to most strikers. Urging them to vote “No” would have seemed like telling them to keep beating their heads against a wall. Therefore, though RTW favored a vote against this sell-out, we couldn’t urge the workers to hold out.
The best thing would have been for all of the Private Lines to have gone out together in January, 2001, with solidarity from NYCT workers: rule-book slowdowns, mass demonstrations, etc. A brief strike then could have been victorious. The members had a new leadership from whom they expected decisive, militant action. It would have been fairly easy to hold a strike of all the Private Lines backed up with mass demonstrations and job actions by NYCT workers. Even the recent strike could have won quickly with mass solidarity rallies and slowdowns by the whole Local membership.
Unfortunately, the leaders of the Private Lines Division of the Local let Toussaint off the hook. George Jennings Sr. and other officials, while demanding aid from the whole Local, in practice pushed a “go-it-alone” strategy. They held a series of large, traffic-hindering demonstrations by Private Lines strikers in Central Queens locations the week of July 7-14, but did not openly demand that Toussaint & Co build these rallies and bring NYCT workers to them. At the July 14 mass meeting in Queens, Jennings denounced the proposed settlement, especially the lack of an iron-clad EPP and the TWU #100 leadership’s failure to mobilize the whole Local in support, but put forward no alternative strategy. He also led a walkout instead of calling for a “No” vote, which would probably have won.
Not only did Jennings put forward no alternative strike-strategy, he ended up telling the strikers to vote for the settlement! In other words, he had no real differences with Toussaint. This plus the late intervention in negotiations by Jennings’ factional ally and TWU International President Sonny Hall, suggests that V-P Jennings’ maneuvers aimed to preserve the Private Lines Division as a fiefdom for its “own” bureaucracy. This is the case whether Jennings stays on as VP or not. Anyway, he is also a TWU International VP.
In line with this, Pres. Sonny Hall put out a factional leaflet toward the end, masquerading as a report on the strike. This appalling document begins, “At this writing, the strike against the Queens Private Lines is entering its 7th grueling week. Two weeks ago, myself and International Vice President Frank McCann, became involved as part of the Queens Negotiating Committee. Prior to that, your International Union monitored the strike and negotiations, and stood by to help to help at a moments notice whenever asked.” In other words, the International leadership, instead of giving some leadership and resources to this vital strike, left the strikers out to dry for a month before deigning to help! The leaflet praises the TWU Queens negotiating committee while not even mentioning Local 100, the organization which was actually on strike and was at least sending some funds and food to the strikers while Hall was standing around with his hands in his pockets!
Hall’s leaflet also says, “The fact that our Union is a Democratic Union, and internal disagreement is allowed, is a victory.” [emphasis in original] Pres. Hall doesn’t bother to say what the “internal disagreement” is. Coming from Hall, any defense of union democracy and internal disagreement is a sick joke – in late 1990, when he was Local 100 President, he called the cops to keep Local 100 members out of our own union hall! (It didn’t work.) At last year’s TWU International Convention, Hall and his cronies suppressed most opposition motions and interfered with the distribution of opposition literature. Pres. Hall: now that you’ve praised internal union democracy and disagreement, will you defend members’ rights to distribute your opponents’ literature non-disruptively at TWU Local and International functions?
Toussaint also misrepresented the conflict. According to the New York Times of 8/7/02, Toussaint “accus[ed] a rival of fomenting the walkout .... Toussaint ... said that he had originally advised the bus drivers’ negotiating committee against a strike.
On June 12, Mr. Toussaint sent a memo to Sonny Hall, the president of the parent union, saying he feared that any strike would last a long time. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Toussaint said it was important for him to ultimately back the strike when the negotiating committee decided on that course of action.
Mr. Toussaint criticized George Jennings, director of Local 100’s private bus division. Mr. Toussaint said that Mr. Jennings fomented the strike. Mr. Jennings said he was shocked that Mr. Toussaint would talk publicly about an internal dispute and declined to discuss his role in pushing for the strike. He said, however, that the city’s original offer to help finance the company’s health plan was unacceptable.
Mr. Toussaint said rivals seeking to outmaneuver him had prolonged the strike. He has been at odds with Mr. Hall, having unsuccessfully challenged him for the parent union’s presidency last year.
There are many things wrong with what the Times quotes Toussaint as saying. The worst is that these statements ignore the ranks’ will to fight as a major factor in “prolong[ing] the strike.” The Private Lines workers stayed out so long because they were dissatisfied with Toussaint’s deal. His statements demonstrate a bureaucratic approach, in which the leaders are the real actors and the ranks only pawns. As revolting is the Local leadership’s strong implication that because the Local gave more aid to the Private Lines workers than ever in the past, therefore the strikers should have shut up and accepted it with a smile, and that any criticisms were only Hall/Jennings factionalism. There’s a lot of that going on. But Jennings’ demagoguery with strikers’ honest complaints didn’t make those complaints invalid.
Toussaint & Co.’s bureaucratic attacks and back-to-work push may have helped poison relations between Private Lines and NYCT workers, aggravate disunity and render the NYCT contract round more difficult for the workers. But we hope that the Private Lines strikers’ experience of solidarity with each other will move them to show solidarity with NYCT workers should need arise.