Labor Notes, a magazine tied to leftish union groups like New Directions, recently published startling criticisms of ND’s election campaign. Citing “backpedaling” within ND, it complained:
Ironically, the near certainty of victory in 2000 led many in New Directions to urge that the militant message be toned down – just to be safe. Instead of talking about how the union could be transformed to take on management ... most of the literature for the local-wide campaign had a bland, generic “good-unionism” feel to it ... It seemed to say that the key to change was electing the right leaders rather than an active membership.
Sounds like a quote from Eric Josephson and the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP). In fact, it’s by ND leader and EB member from RTO, Steve Downs! In the past, when Josephson made criticisms of ND similar to those made above, most ND’ers treated him like a pariah and banned him from attending publicly advertised ND meetings. Downs writes further:
Many of the ND officers, as well as its rank and file activists, continue to hold a vision of unionism that goes beyond simply providing a better service to the members.... the debate over the two different approaches ... will go a long way to determining the success of the new leadership ...
So what Downs first described as a decision by “many” ND members to temporarily “tone down” their “militant message” during the elections, has actually become the dropping of ND’s “vision” altogether on the part of at least some ND elected officers.
There are indeed two main currents in ND: President Roger Toussaint and his circle, still based largely in the Track Division, and RTO VP Tim Schermerhorn, Steve Downs and others, who are close to Labor Notes magazine.
In the past, Toussaint appeared as a militant critic of the Schermerhorn/Downs leadership of ND. However, when he replaced Schermerhorn as ND Presidential candidate, they seemed to switch roles. As Toussaint transforms into a thorough bureaucrat, his opponents in ND criticize him for not being militant enough, for not relying on the rank and file.
Toussaint used to oppose any support for Democrats or Republicans. He’s now run into the arms of the Democrats and joined with the union hacks who are a bulwark of the Democrats. To stay tight with them, he downplays the idea of striking.
Toussaint has already assembled the elements of a new bureaucratic regime. Already the focus of the new leadership is on endless meetings with bosses and filing endless paper with supposedly pro-worker branches of government, as well as lobbying Democratic and Republican Parties.
Despite all this, the strategy of focusing on getting elected rather than mobilizing the union’s members has been ND’s approach for years. Their newspaper, Hell on Wheels, has become less militant-sounding. Faced with the old guard’s red-baiting and accusations of “strike-happiness,” ND moved to reassure more conservative workers that they had nothing to fear. Thus, during the last contract negotiations ND never really argued for a strike. When transit workers came out more and more in favor of strike action and were confronted by Giuliani’s strike-busting injunction in December, ’99, ND backed down from their own motion to recommend a strike, and counseled obedience to the prohibition of the word “strike” instead.
Over time, ND’s leaders have increasingly relied on suing the union and using the courts against the union bureaucracy. This horrible approach reinforced the idea that workers themselves are powerless, and strengthened the power of the bosses’ courts to intervene in the workers’ unions – a power which they are now using to defeat union power everywhere.
In the past election the LRP critically supported ND, saying that it would not try to stand in the way of the choice being made by militant workers to put ND into office. We explained that we would go through the experience of an ND leadership with our fellow-workers, so as to better expose in practice ND’s dead-end leadership. We are now approaching Toussaint’s and ND’s first major test.
So why is Downs suddenly criticizing ND’s own campaign? Downs and other ND leaders are worried that now that he’s been elected President of the local on the ND ticket, Toussaint is moving to consolidate his own bureaucratic power over the union and cast ND aside. They have good reason to fear this. Now that Toussaint and his associates are replacing the James bureaucratic machine with one of their own, they no longer need ND. Despite the fact that ND emphasizes elections and court suits rather than rank and file mobilization, it still must rely on rank and file support to a greater degree than the top dogs. It is therefore now seen as a threat by Toussaint & Co. Top bureaucrats in power are afraid of any workers’ struggle which might get “out of hand.”
Thus the new leadership has gone so far as to try to stop the distribution of the LRP’s Revolutionary Transit Worker at union functions like the Borough-wide HBT crisis meetings. Toussaint and Co. have also excluded a number of elected officials, apparently including at least one ND member, from the delegations of Local officers organizing for March 28, because they might express independent opinions. Toussaint’s long-time associate, MoW Vice-President Julio Rivera, also excluded LRP supporter Josephson, the elected Vice-Chair of Track Division, from participating in the delegations. Rivera’s reason? Josephson might – gasp! – express some disagreement with President Toussaint’s leadership or perhaps even suggest that the rally should be a step toward a strike!
All workers who see the need for a fightback should demand that ND as a whole repudiate the pro-Democratic party policy of Toussaint and Co. If ND is for real about mass struggle, let them stop hinting and openly prepare the membership for the struggles that we will have to undertake. And let them consistently fight for general membership meetings now to act on the attacks we face. Let them publicize and organize against the anti-democratic moves of Toussaint and Co. But we warn them that Schermerhorn and Downs will not provide any fundamentally different leadership.
LRP supporters and other workers who want to fight the bosses will whole-heartedly build and join such initiatives, while openly raising their specific viewpoints. The sooner this happens, the better for the membership.