President Roger Toussaint says he’ll never accept any reduction in health benefits. Fine words, but without a plan for a massive, ongoing membership fight, they’re just hot air.
Unfortunately, it seems as though the leadership does not have such a plan. While they’ve worked hard to mobilize the ranks for the March 28 demonstration, if it was designed to mobilize us for a bigger struggle, they would have announced the date for a general membership meeting to decide how we’re going to fight the rest of the way. By not making clear that the rally is just the first step, they let management think that they can just sit-out the protests, and then go ahead and implement their attacks.
Worse, there are strong indications that the leadership imagines it can avoid leading a real struggle by encouraging us to support their idea of “political action” – postponing our struggle to support Democratic Party “friends of labor,” in the hope that when elected the Democratic pols will help us. That would be suicidal.
Bad signs of the new leadership’s strategy can be seen in their conduct of the Private Lines struggle. Private Lines workers wanted to fight. At their rally on Feb. 13, 1,500 shouted their determination to go “All the way!“ Then the one-day Liberty Lines strike on March 1 was victorious. Think how much more powerful it would have been had all the Private Lines workers struck at once! But since then the leadership hasn’t built on the Liberty Lines example. They said for months that no TWU member would scab on Private Lines workers, but didn’t leaflet for the necessary overtime refusal till the day before the strike. And they got a much worse contract for Liberty Lines Express, which runs routes outside Westchester, accepting management’s original 2.5% wage-hike offer. Negotiations with the other Private Lines bosses whose contracts expired almost 3 months ago continue behind closed doors. The workers are kept mostly in the dark, as under the James Gang.
Toussaint & Co. are using the bankrupt strategy of “pattern bargaining.” They are negotiating with the Private Lines bosses, hoping the Liberty Lines contract will set the pattern for the rest. Thus, they hope to avoid having to organize a strike. But what if the rotten contract with Liberty Lines Express sets the pattern?
City transit workers are getting even less news about the HBT negotiations. Toussaint and Co. held meetings about the crisis in each of the boroughs. The first meeting, in Brooklyn, attracted 700-800 members. None of the rest drew more than 150. Perhaps this was because the meetings were “informational,” meaning members would not have a chance to vote on a strategy to fight back (in fact, the meetings provided almost no information about the negotiations with the MTA either).
Participants in the Feb. 13 Private Lines rally saw another important part of the new leaders’ strategy, in the nauseating sight of Toussaint and right-wing, pro-capitalist City Council President Peter Vallone warmly embracing. This strategy, presented primarily by Pres. Toussaint and Secretary-Treasurer Ed Watt, calls for continual “political action,” meaning support to Democratic Party politicians. Sucking up to the Democrats, like the Republicans, always involves holding back mass struggle – our only means to effectively defend our interests against the bosses.
Supporting Democrats has proved suicidal for labor and oppressed people. The Democrats are a capitalist party not fundamentally different than the Republicans. They use their reputation as friends of labor and opponents of racism to hold back our struggles in the interests of the ruling class.
At the meeting, Toussaint said the March 28 demonstration could pressure the MTA to at least fund the HBT’s reserves (supposed to be $20 million) and buy us some time. A number of members at the meetings, including this writer, said that we should also at least consider job actions, up to a strike. Several members asked how we can break the Taylor Law.
Toussaint and Co. ignored or pooh-poohed these members’ comments. Watt said that the TWU is participating in a grouping of union leaders lobbying for Taylor Law changes. But history shows that such bureaucratic efforts never win real changes. Watt went further: he said that there are good things in the Taylor Law! It supposedly guarantees certain public employee rights in exchange for crushing fines on strikers. Nonsense: the strike wave of 1966 to 1970 (including our transit strike!) won those rights, not the politicians who passed the Taylor Law. But the Taylor Law does make pro-capitalist bureaucrats’ jobs much easier: they can hold back workers’ struggles by blaming the law.
With such a strategy, no wonder the Toussaint leadership has changed its tune on fighting to re-open our rotten contract. At one point Toussaint said that he might be for a re-opener. But more recently he came out against re-opening the contract. Toussaint’s strategy is to wait until the contract expires and hope that there are more “labor friendly” politicians in office. This will prove an illusion. Further, not fighting to re-open the contract will mean losing an opportunity to launch a struggle at a time when many city workers are working without a contract and could join us. Militant workers should spread the idea of a contract re-opener. Other members of ND may still favor a re-opener. They should say so openly, and fight for it.
A big, militant turnout at the March 28 rally can pressure the leadership to go further than they’re planning toward leading mass action to defend the HBT and fight our contract’s other rotten provisions. Supporters of Revolutionary Transit Worker will be doing our best to forward this aim, distributing placards that read “No Health Fund – No Work! Prepare to Strike!“ and distributing this bulletin. If you agree with the ideas in this bulletin or just with our placards’ slogan, let us know and join us in distributing more. Together, we can begin to organize as a group which can play a leading role in the coming struggles, holding the leaders’ feet to the fire, ready to lead the struggle forward if they sell out.
Pressure from below can push our leaders forward, but ultimately they will have to be replaced by leaders prepared to take the struggle all the way. The LRP believes that only a revolutionary socialist leadership can do this, because capitalism cannot even maintain our working and living conditions, let alone allow for their improvement. Therefore, the only leadership that can be trusted not to sell out to the bosses is one committed to overthrowing capitalism. We expect to convince more and more workers of this in the coming years. Right now, our work begins with trying to offer the best leadership in our day-to-day struggles, and explaining how our role is connected to our socialist ideas. We hope you’ll contact us to discuss these ideas some more.