The fight for the 2003-5 contract is over. We are just starting to feel the effects of this sellout deal. The fight to defend our jobs and working conditions, and to build a new militant leadership in the union to future betrayals is just beginning.
By a vote of 11,757 to 7,825, or 60%-40%, Local 100 members ratified the contract drawn up by the MTA and their new partner, Roger Toussaint. President Toussaint has hailed this result as a vote of confidence in his leadership. Crap. Willie James’s 1999 contract got a higher percentage of votes in favor, and we all know what most workers really thought of that deal!
While the contract did win reforms to the disciplinary system, basically hold the line on health benefits and win some other improvements, it cut our real wages after inflation, and gave the MTA a green light to lay us off, replace jobs with “new technology,” and farm out whatever work they want to private contractors. So how did workers who had been spoiling for a fight with the TA for years and who, some weeks before, had voted unanimously to authorize a strike end up ratifying?
The real explanation is not that workers realized how great the contract was, but that Toussaint confused many with a coverup of the worst aspects of the deal, and convinced more that we’d likely get even worse if we turned it down. Toussaint and his army of paid union hall hangers-on made a huge effort to pressure workers to vote “yes.” They lied that in giving up our no-layoff clause they hadn’t really given up anything, and they lied that if the contract was voted down it would automatically go to arbitration. They said that it was the best contract that could have been won under the circumstances – ignoring that those circumstances included Toussaint’s refusal to even threaten the MTA with a strike during negotiations, and his failure to demand that the MTA open their books or that Pataki increase funding of public transport or face the consequences.
Meanwhile, the most prominent elected officials opposing the contract – Noel Acevedo, Tim Schermerhorn, Steve Downs and other supporters of Rank and File Advocate – conducted a weak campaign mostly through the media instead of at worksites and meetings. They opposed efforts to form a broad committee of workers against the contract. While they did distribute leaflets against the contract, they preferred calling a couple of press conferences to get their faces in the media. Schermerhorn and Downs even took off on vacations after the contract deal!
Revolutionary Transit Worker played a prominent role in the fight against Toussaint’s sellout contract. We were the first to draw attention to the decisive no-layoff clause giveback, distributed many thousands of copies of a special edition of RTW against the contract, and took on Toussaint & Co.’s lies at various contract discussion meetings. RTW’s Eric Josephson (Vice-Chair, Track Division) joined with Marty Goodman (Executive Board Member for Stations) to kick-off the formation of a new group: Transit Workers Against the Contract (TWAC). TWAC held a successful meeting of almost thirty workers to discuss the contract and the need to fight against it. At its founding meeting TWAC agreed on the key reasons to oppose the contract, the need to oppose arbitration and call for a genuine, democratic Membership Meeting to decide the next step in the event of a contract rejection. Significantly, the meeting also passed a resolution of No Confidence in Toussaint. TWAC issued a leaflet in thousands of copies explaining these points.
But neither RTW nor TWAC were numerically strong enough to represent an alternative to Toussaint & Co. So ultimately, fearing that arbitration and the sellout-Toussaint leadership would stick us with a worse contract, many workers who hated the contract “held their nose” and voted “yes” and the contract passed.
However, the anger and sense of power transit workers developed during the contract campaign and the growing distrust of the Toussaint leadership will fuel future struggles. Management is just beginning to take advantage of the givebacks and rotten deals in the contract. They’ve already moved to close 177 token booths and cut several bus routes. And you can bet that the bus consolidation will be a nightmare as the TA takes advantage of its new freedom to end “all impediments” to movement of workers and equipment among current Surface divisions, meaning lousy reporting locations, in-field reliefs, longer runs, bad hours and more.
Further attacks can be expected. As we reported in RTW No. 16, the week before Toussaint cut the contract deal, Newsday reported that NYCT President Larry Reuter had already outlined a plan “in which as many as 3,100 employees would be laid off, late-night bus service discontinued, 63 routes eliminated and other services slashed” (Dec. 18, 2002).
There’s a lot of fighting spirit among transit workers. But Toussaint’s betrayal has led many to ask – are we doomed to betrayal? Toussaint used to seem like such a militant, so why did he sell out? What’s the alternative? Transit workers need to answer these questions if we are to lead the coming struggles to victory.
Toussaint came to power on the back of the ranks’ powerful 1999 contract struggle and their disgust at Willie James’s betrayal. He had built a reputation as a fighter throughout years in the union, first as a socialist, then as a union militant. But by the time he ran for office in 1999, Toussaint had cast aside his previous militancy. He dropped his past socialist views, and decided that he no longer wanted to be an uncompromising representative of the workers’ interests. His new aim was to become a powerful union bureaucrat, and he adopted the outlook to fit.
While not, at least for now, quite as highly paid and financially corrupt as other union leaders (although he still makes more than any transit worker), Toussaint and his ilk enjoy a highly privileged position. They traded their work clothes and tough jobs for suits and office chairs, and get a rush from rubbing shoulders with politicians and getting attention in the media. These privileges depend on their position as brokers between the workers and the bosses. While they have to try to defend the workers to maintain their positions, union bureaucrats like Toussaint also seek to accommodate the interests of the capitalist bosses, whose economic system they now rely on for their comfortable lives and social status.
The problem for the bureaucrats is that as the economic crisis worsens, the capitalists can only save their profits by intensifying the exploitation of the workers. That means taking back past concessions and weakening the unions. To maintain their privileged position, union bureaucrats have to constantly perform a balancing act between the workers and the bosses; but their fundamental loyalty is to the capitalist system. They try to mobilize the workers as little as possible, to keep us from developing a real sense of our power and interests which would inevitably threaten the bureaucrats’ positions. This Marxist understanding of the class nature of capitalism and the role of the trade union bureaucracy enabled us to predict clearly the Toussaint leadership’s inevitable betrayal. Toussaint’s sellout was not because of his real personal corruption or weakness, but because of the specific class interests of the trade union bureaucracy and their capitalist masters.
Toussaint knew he would have to eventually cut deals with the bosses and sacrifice the workers’ fundamental interests. He hoped he could also secure enough minor concessions to help him get re-elected. He also understood that workers would fight against this, and that he would have to surround himself with a strong bureaucracy to enforce his policies and weaken his militant opponents.
Toussaint first moved to shore up a core of bureaucrats loyal to him. He appointed the more corrupt E. Board members to staff positions, making them dependent on him for their higher salaries. He hired a large number of staffers from outside the union to work in education and other programs. And the new shop stewards largely remained unelected and trained to convey the leadership’s views from the top, rather than represent the ranks from the bottom.
Toussaint had a delicate task: he had to avoid disappointing workers’ expectations of a winning contract struggle, while at the same time lowering those expectations. Simultaneously, he had to pressure the MTA for concessions in order to get the contract approved and win re-election, but without mobilizing the membership so much that they would demand a strike.
Throughout the contract campaign, Toussaint & Co. vacillated between militant declarations echoing the ranks’ fighting mood, and efforts to lower the ranks’ expectations. For example, over a year before contract negotiations began, the leadership conducted a survey, packed with leading questions, asking members to prioritize their most important contract concerns, including maintaining health care coverage, reforming the oppressive disciplinary system, and wage raises. This was calculated to instill in workers’ minds that we would have to accept improvements in some areas and not others. The survey later provided Toussaint with an opportunity to blame the workers for his contract compromises and givebacks. But workers didn’t necessarily buy into the idea of a trade-off. And the same survey indicated that almost a third of members were in favor of strike action, before the campaign had even begun!
Nonetheless, Toussaint’s strategy was not a secret. Increasingly over the past year he called for “partnership” between the TA and the union. At the kick-off negotiating session on September 20, he outlined the trade-off: the TA should accord union members “respect and dignity” and recognize the union as a “partner” in running the system. In return, the union would co-operate in rationalizing the system and introducing new technology. Further confirmation of this came soon. The New York Times (Nov. 30, 2002) reported that in interviews with the media Toussaint “gave hints of moderation, noting that the results of the [negotiations] would be “conditioned by the current circumstances,” saying that if the deficit-plagued “authority [were] more accommodating on non-economic issues, most notably safety and discipline,” the union could be open to reaching an agreement. This proved to be the blueprint for Toussaint’s sellout.
The key to Toussaint’s contract strategy was to try to use the membership’s power to pressure management into offering enough concessions to give him a chance of selling a deal to the membership, while keeping strict control over the struggle. The key test of this was at the December 7 General Membership Meetings at the Javits Center.
By the time of the meetings Toussaint’s strategy of offering compromises to management had gotten nothing but increased attacks from the TA and politicians. Facing an angry membership that wanted action, Toussaint had to appear militant and threaten the bosses with a fight without giving in to the members demands for a strike. Toussaint no doubt feared that if the members were allowed to democratically debate and decide the way forward, there could be a repeat of 1999 with a massive vote to strike. RTW supporters tried to introduce motions that would do exactly that.
We circulated thousands of copies of a leaflet proposing a three-step plan to take the struggle forward by: 1) reaffirming the Local’s most important contract demands, to counter Toussaint’s hints at compromise and make it harder for him to sell them out; 2) ordering the E. Board to call a strike at contract expiration on December 15 if the MTA had not gone a long way to satisfying those demands; and 3) ordering the Board to prepare the Local to strike by creating a Strike Preparation Council that would be open to all members to debate and decide on how to prepare and conduct the strike.
We knew it would require a fight on the floor of the meetings just to secure the members’ right to discuss the issues. We approached Rank and File Advocate supporters for an agreement to join together to fight for the ranks’ democratic rights in the meeting, but got no commitment. We did reach such an agreement with a number of independent militants.
The issue of RTW that we also distributed at the meetings warned that Toussaint might try to avoid a real strike motion by raising one of his own that would tie him to nothing concrete and keep all power over the struggle in the hands of his rubber-stamp E. Board and that workers should oppose this (see RTW No. 13).
Our prediction proved absolutely accurate. At the first meeting, thousands of workers listened to reports from various division leaders on management’s provocative stonewalling in negotiations. They were furious at the bosses by the time Toussaint took the microphone. It seemed that there would be an opportunity to ask questions and raise motions, as there had been in 1999, since microphones had been set up on the floor at the front of the room. But such illusions in union democracy soon vanished.
Toussaint gave a rousing speech against the MTA and soon asked the workers to raise their hands if they were in favor of a strike. The hands of every one of the thousands of workers in attendance immediately rose and powerful chants of “Strike! Strike!” rung through the hall. When order was restored Toussaint explained that the decision was unanimous to authorize the Executive Board to call a strike if it decided one would be necessary, but that this did not mean a strike was automatic.
The ranks’ excitement that the leadership seemed to have finally come out in support of a strike blinded them to the trick Toussaint was pulling. And no help came from the leading “militant oppositionists” in the room. Speaking from the stage, prominent Rank and File Advocate supporters like Tim Schermerhorn (E. Board member for RTO) had the opportunity to defend the ranks’ democratic rights in the meeting, but cowardly refused to say a word. Thus Toussaint was free to end the meeting soon after, with no opportunity for questions let alone discussion of other motions.
Before the second meeting, RTW supporter Eric Josephson joined with E. Board Member for Stations Marty Goodman, to issue a joint motion to tie Toussaint & Co. to a specific strike date for specific demands. But Toussaint was again able to prevent any democratic discussion. The second meeting ended as the first did, with the workers thinking they had voted to strike when they had really given Toussaint the power to prevent one.
RTW continued to work with other militants to make the Toussaint leadership accountable to the ranks’ demands for struggle. But Toussaint’s trampling over union democracy in the General Membership Meetings meant that he was free to cut a sellout deal with management and then try to sell it to the membership.
Toussaint’s betrayal underscores the importance of fighting for the membership’s rights to democratically discuss and decide on union policy in meetings and hold the leadership accountable. Had a sufficiently large group of workers been organized in advance of the General Membership Meetings to demand a democratic discussion and vote on the questions of the struggle, they could have forced a discussion and vote on a a real strike motion and the struggle could have turned out a lot differently. But the militants with whom RTW worked were too few to achieve this. Building such a militant group for the coming struggles will be decisive.
Most important, however, is building a new leadership for the union with a political program that meet’s the workers’ needs and can lead our struggles to victory. Toussaint betrayed the ranks’ demands for a militant contract fight because it would have threatened the capitalist system he serves. A transit strike would have dealt a massive blow to capitalist profit making and promised to inspire the entire working class into struggle against all the capitalist attacks that are coming down on us, from layoffs to budget cuts.
The only leadership that we can rely on to lead such a struggle to victory and not compromise with the capitalists’ demands is one that wants to see their whole system overthrown: a revolutionary socialist leadership. RTW believes that the working class has the power to not just beat back the capitalists attacks, but the power to overthrow the system and build in its place a classless socialist society free from exploitation and oppression. We seek to unite with the broadest number of workers in the day to day struggle against the bosses. Through the course of mass struggles, we are confident that more and more workers will come to agree with our revolutionary perspective and join with our supporters in the League for the Revolutionary Party to build a revolutionary socialist leadership not just for the union, but to lead all our class’s struggles.
Soon after cutting their deal, Toussaint and MTA Chairman Kalikow emerged from negotiations smiling and announced that a deal had been reached. In a disgusting display, Toussaint even hugged the boss in front of the media – the same man who had threatening Taylor Law writs sent to every Local 100 member. Toussaint announced that the deal laid the basis for a new era of cooperation between the union and management. It certainly threatens to open a new era of the union leadership’s cooperation with management’s attacks on us. In this new era, a revolutionary socialist leadership will be urgently needed. We encourage interested readers to discuss this perspective with us.