Contract expiration is closing in. The MTA continues to stonewall. Nonetheless, their chief negotiator, Dellaverson, says, uneasily, that the MTA and the TWU should be able to reach an acceptable contract without a strike. Perhaps they realize how much they’ve been provoking TWU members and the rest of the of the area’s working class.
They refused to contribute enough to our HBT to keep it afloat till December 15. They have dismissed our demands for the reform of their “plantation justice” system. They provocatively raised a reorganization plan, including their old “Regional Bus Company,” and threatened layoffs. They insist that the Contract must be “revenue-neutral,” which means it must cost them no more than the current take-back contract. In reality, this means they want more take-backs.
Together with the rest of the capitalists and their government, they promise a big fare increase. Now, citing a $663 million deficit, they also threaten cuts in each MTA department. In NYC Subways and Busses, that will mean reduced service in poor, especially Black and Latino working-class neighborhoods. This will come together with the Mayor’s current and the Governor’s coming service cuts and tax increases aimed at forcing workers to pay for the capitalist’s economic crisis.
In the face of the MTA and politicians’ hardball tactics our union leadership still hasn’t threatened a strike even just to see if it can scare the MTA into discussing our demands seriously. With contract expiration close, we must pressure our leadership to come out with a real strike threat, not just in words but by strike preparation.
RTW has consistently argued that Local 100 should prepare to strike. We have the power to shut the city down to win our demands as well as amnesty from Taylor Law penalties. Even workers who are not yet sure they favor striking should support strike preparation – it’s the only way to see whether we can win our demands without a strike.
The whole Local is afire with talk of a strike. Many transit workers have been arguing for a strike, others are uncertain. Lately, some workers have been arguing against a strike. In this debate, every member of the Local is speaking up – except Local President, Roger Toussaint!
For the first several weeks of negotiations, Toussaint & Co gave conflicting statements about striking. Sometimes Toussaint said that he would do everything possible to prevent a strike, while at other times he said that he retained the option to strike. In recent weeks Toussaint has said little, except to denounce RTW supporters for “putting up strike placards and headlines and other bullshit rhetoric everywhere” (Shop Stewards’ meeting, November 7).
At the same time, such Toussaint associates as John Samuelsen, the “Acting VP” of MoW, sometimes tell members individually and at small meetings that a strike is likely. Suggested preparation? Save your money. Such advice doesn’t reach most members, leaves the few who do hear it adrift and gets the bureaucrats off the hook for what should be the whole union’s responsibility.
Various Local officers say the anti-“incitement” clause of the Taylor Law prevents them from clearly preparing to strike. But the Taylor Law is only as strong as we let it be. Our power to shut the city down by striking is more powerful than any law the politicians and courts can come up with. The threat of a solid strike can force the bosses and politicians to back off their Taylor Law threats, just as the strike by sanitation workers in the 1970s won its demands including amnesty from all Taylor Law penalties.
Arguing for a strike will be just as “illegal” on December 15 as it is today. If the union’s members are expected to have the courage to strike, then the leadership should have the courage to talk about it. Instead, so far they have acted scared, and this communicates fear to the ranks. As a result, while growing numbers of transit workers favor a strike, the smaller number of anti-strike voices is also growing. The union leadership is doing nothing to back up the former and counter the fears of the latter.
To prepare all of us to strike, if necessary, the Local can take a number of steps. First, the Shop Steward meetings, open to all members, can meet more frequently, explicitly to prepare the Local to strike and to take the plans back to the field. These meetings are currently every two weeks and serve as conveyor belts between Toussaint & Co and the members; and to instruct participants in elementary grievance-filing. The latter, while necessary, should take a back seat now to the vastly more urgent work of member mobilization from the ranks up, not from Toussaint down.
These meetings will draw in more members if they discuss and decide contract-struggle policy, not just hear and carry out the Local bureaucracy’s decrees. They would show strength and resolve to the bosses and thus to wavering or fearful members, bringing them into the fight.
The Joint Expanded Executive Board Meeting of November 23 can also start mobilizing the members. Whether the Local leadership recognizes the need for strike readiness or not, the union officers and other members can insist on voting to reaffirm our contract demands and to prepare to strike to win them; and take the message to the field. They can vote to keep meeting as the Local 100 Strike Preparation Council and bring the ranks into the planning and organizing. This will bring more movement in negotiations in a week than anything in the last two months.
We should especially emphasize and publicize our contract demand for No Fare Hikes or Service Cuts. We should tell the rest of the area working class that if the MTA makes us strike, that will be one of the things we’re striking for. Strike action to this end will build working class unity and show that workers’ mass action is much more effective at winning our demands than writing campaigns to politicians are.
The leadership has announced a Local 100 General Membership Meeting for December 7, eight days before contract expiration. At that meeting, if the MTA hasn’t budged we’d better be prepared to strike.
At past contract expiration dates Hall, James and their ilk used to go for contract extensions or try to ram through lousy contracts. Toussaint will have a harder time if he tries to do this. The combination of the MTA’s intransigence, many workers’ growing pro-strike sentiment and Toussaint’s own militant reputation make it difficult for him to back down now. Nonetheless, the growing government and MTA budget crises allow the bosses and supposed “labor-friendly” politicians to claim that they need givebacks from us. Pressure from the ranks can prevent the Local leadership from pushing this line on us and force them into effective strike preparation instead.
To avoid having a rotten contract shoved down our throats, or the worse alternative of striking for weak demands, we have to be clear on what demands are non-negotiable. The Local has adopted many excellent demands, but we have to focus on the most important ones to mount the most united, powerful struggle.
Toussaint & Co. adopted the slogan “Second Class No More” for our contract campaign. RTW noted that the slogan didn’t explain what a first class contract would look like and what we must do if the MTA doesn’t offer us one. So we spread the slogan First Class Contract or Strike! At the September 25 and October 30 TWU rallies, RTW supporters distributed hundreds of placards with this slogan, and a list of demands that are essential to a “first class contract.” [Click here for a picture.] Demonstrating transit workers eagerly took and brandished them. They recognized that these demands are worth striking for. But only a membership organized and ready to strike can keep the union bureaucracy from dropping or watering down these important demands:
We must send the message to the MTA and the politicians that a contract without just one of these essential demands will bring on a strike that will shut the city down until we win them.
The MTA and politicians will use the massive city and state budget crisis to try to make us accept a give-back contract. The City has a budget deficit of $1 billion this year, and a projected deficit of $6 billion next year. The state has a deficit of more than $10 billion. Mayor Bloomberg has announced massive budget cuts and tax hikes to cover the City’s deficit and Governor Pataki will surely act similarly.
Bloomberg’s proposal to restore a commuter tax and raise real estate taxes by up to 25% is an attempt to convince workers that he intends the rich to shoulder most of the burden. But the property tax hike will lead to increased prices and rent for workers, and the commuter tax is a cover for his proposal cut income taxes on the richest New Yorkers. The budget cuts to all city agencies will overwhelmingly target the working class. And Bloomberg is threatening that he’ll lay off thousands of city workers if the unions don’t agree to $600 million in givebacks, including longer work days and new health care payments.
If we prepare to strike for our contract demands, the politicians will condemn us for being greedy. They’ll say, if all New Yorkers have to share the pain, what makes transit workers special? But the Mayor’s personal wealth is billions of dollars and could pay for the budget deficit by itself! More important, we should be clear who the debt is owed to. The City currently pays $2.3 billion a year to service debts to Wall Street. Many of the original loans have already been repaid several times over, but the City is still paying interest! In other words, the deficit is really Wall Street’s demand for more profits.
The answer is for the working class to fight to Repudiate the Debt to the Banks and Corporations and to Make the Capitalists Pay for Their Economic Crisis!
Because of the economic crisis, the politicians and MTA are playing hardball with us and making it necessary for us to strike to win our contract demands. But in one way, the economic crisis could actually make it easier for us to strike and win. A transit strike could spark a fightback by the whole working class against all the capitalist attacks. Fear of this could force the MTA and politicians to cave in to our demands quickly, especially if Local 100 takes a clear stand against all the politicians’ attempts to make the working class pay for the crisis.
The MTA has just voted to increase the transit fare in part to be able to blame our “greedy” contract demands. Winning support from the rest of the working class for our contract struggle begins with the fight against a transit fare hike. But Toussaint and Co’s “Save the Fare” campaign relies on politicians instead of mobilizing workers’ power. This campaign has the formal help of “community organizations,” middle-class pressure groups like the Straphangers’ Campaign, and words of encouragement from the NYC Central Labor Council. Dozens of Local members have passed out leaflets to riders opposing the fare increase and urging them to beg Governor Pataki to stop it. The Local also has prepaid post cards with this plea available. The Local leadership stays silent, however, on our official contract demand opposing transit fare hikes and service cuts.
Tens of thousands of riders have faxed, written or otherwise contacted Pataki to oppose the fare hike. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this: we workers often have to place demands on the capitalists and their politicians. Press conferences and letter-writing campaigns can play a role. Sometimes bad publicity can win partial, temporary gains, as with last year’s successful campaign against token booth closings.
But it’s an illusion that by themselves, such campaigns can fight major capitalist attacks; and a worse illusion that union “political action” (members voting every few years) can set major government policy. And now that Pataki has been re-elected and Toussaint’s favored and equally capitalist Democrats have been swamped, this strategy has reached a dead-end.
But there is another way, the way of mass working-class struggle, and Local 100 is in an excellent position to wage this struggle. A supporter of RTW raised and the Contract Policy Committee and EB passed unanimously a contract demand for No Bus or Subway Fare Hikes or Service Cuts. If the MTA forces us to strike, that must be one of the demands we strike for. We would immediately become the champions of the whole working class, the defenders of their standard of living.
And what an example for the working class! Coinciding with rising anger at budget cuts and tax hikes, a transit strike could spark demands by workers for a general strike against all the capitalist attacks! Thus a transit workers’ strike could start reversing the effects of decades of attacks on the working class.
RTW is ready to join with every militant worker who wants the Local to prepare to strike to win our contract demands. And as long as the Toussaint leadership is taking steps forward in the struggle, we’ll stand behind them in a united struggle. But Toussaint and Co.’s record so far, and in particular their failure to prepare the Local to strike means that militant workers shouldn’t trust them and wait passively for their lead. We have to take the initiative to fight for a winning strike strategy in the Local and be ready to fight any attempt by Toussaint and Co. to hold back the struggle.
But an all-out struggle for our demands, let alone against all the anti-working class attacks, will deal a body blow to the capitalists. The Toussaint leadership is committed to working within the limits of what capitalism can afford. But our standard of living and our rights on the job are increasingly in the way of the capitalists reviving their falling profits. Therefore we can expect Toussaint and other pro-capitalist bureaucrats like him to betray us sooner or later. Only a revolutionary socialist leadership can be relied on to lead an all-out contract struggle because only it has no stake in supporting the system.
Mass working-class struggles against the capitalist attacks are inevitable. Through such struggles more and more workers will come to see that our class has the power to not just beat back the attacks but to overthrow the capitalist system. Our class has the potential to do away with capitalism’s exploitation, oppression and wars and build a classless society of abundance and freedom: a socialist society. In the course of the current transit struggle RTW and its supporting organization, the League for the Revolutionary Party, hope to get in touch with other transit workers who are thinking along these lines. Together we can play a decisive role in the current contract struggle. And by joining to build a revolutionary socialist party we can prepare to lead even greater struggles in the future.