The current contract between TWU Local 100 and the MTA reduced pension contributions for Tier 3/4 members to 2% in December 2000. This gain was the result of our pro-strike movement in 1999. Because of the reduction in contributions, members who had been paying 5.3% – perhaps 2/3 of the membership – naturally wanted their over-payment back.
The previous union leadership asked New York State legislators to pass a refund bill, which they did, overwhelmingly, in 2000. Gov. Pataki vetoed it. The legislators, at the current union leaders’ request, re-introduced the bill and again passed it overwhelmingly this past summer. On December 19, Pataki vetoed it again. The bill went back to committee, where the legislators are now ignoring it.
Local 100 members still want the refund – it’s our money, after all. The leadership under Roger Toussaint wants the legislators to... re-re-introduce the bill! For what – so Pataki can veto it again?
In fact, the New York State Constitution provides for the Legislature to override a governor’s veto by a 2/3 vote of each House, NYS Assembly and Senate. You’d think that, since the legislature passed the bill overwhelmingly – twice – they’d have no problem coming up with a 2/3 vote.
So why doesn’t the Local 100 leadership pressure the legislators to override the veto? After all, the Toussaint machine stresses “political action,” that is, voting and lobbying, as the way forward for workers. Since they claim that cultivating Democratic and Republican politicians is supposed to pay off for us, why don’t they put their ideas to the test and fight the veto?
The answer is that we’ve already seen the pay-off. The bill passed twice, strictly for show. The legislators must have known that Pataki would veto – and that the union leaders would tell the members to vote for them anyway. The pension overpayment in NYCERS is invested in stocks, making stockbrokers and other wealthy capitalists even wealthier. The legislators vote for show to put the money in our pockets, secure in the knowledge that it will never get there. Instead, the cash will stay with their real constituents, the capitalists.
Further, these politicians don’t really want a significant sector of workers, transit workers, to get their own money back: it would only raise other workers’ expectations. The stage is set to use the refund as a bargaining chip in the 2002 Contract, giving us “gains” paid for by our own money!
Many transit workers know that “political action” is a rich man’s game and workers’ shame. That’s why almost half the Local members aren’t registered and many of the rest don’t vote. The union leaders, from Toussaint on down often criticize the members for supposed “apathy” and failure to recognize the benefits of electoralism. Non-voting members, however, have a better handle on the situation than these leaders, precisely because of such experiences as the Pension Refund Bill.
The union leadership is complicit in the charade. Even when they can’t convince the members to give a shit about capitalist elections and lobbying, they convince many that there is no other way. That’s what leads to so-called apathy: if electoralism is the only game in town, and it doesn’t work, why bother yourself at all?
The union bureaucrats doubly re-inforce this with their obvious fear of pressuring the legislators to over-ride a veto of the bill most popular with Local 100 members. Toussaint & Co. fear that if the members really mobilize and start to realize our own strength, we’ll demand more all the time – more than the crisis-ridden capitalist system can afford. Then the capitalists and their politicians will cut the union bureaucrats off. Then the bureaucrats will no longer be able to deliver even a legislative charade, like the Pension Refund, to the members.
Of course, RTW also believes in political action. There is nothing more political than mass strike action, especially for government employees like ourselves. It was the credible threat of a strike in December ’99 which won the pension contribution reduction in the first place. And it was the Toussaint machine’s enthusiastic enrollment in capitalist “political action” that has becalmed us since.
The coming mass working-class struggles will start winning back the gains lost to decades of the union bureaucrats’ beloved “political action.” The most politically conscious workers will learn from those struggles the need for a working-class, revolutionary political party. With that party we’ll be able to sweep aside the union bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists who depend on keeping workers down.