At a tumultuous meeting of striking Queens Private Lines workers on Sunday, July 14, a majority walked out to protest a settlement favored by TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint. The deal, hatched by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, would have the City lend the Private Lines’ bosses $2 million to fund the workers’ health care plan. The bosses would then repay the loan with unspecified cost savings. While this supposedly would require no concessions from the workers, past experience makes the Private Lines workers suspicious.
By the time of the mass meeting, the Private Lines workers had been out on strike for a month. They’d stood on picket lines in the hot sun for hours and kept up their resolve despite receiving little assistance from the Local or the International. Financial support to the strikers started late and totals only $40 a day. Though the Local treasury is low, the leadership delayed passing a Local-wide assessment and could do more to encourage individual member donations. Further, the TWU International, led by President Sonny Hall, hasn’t opened its richer treasury for strike benefits.
Toussaint actually weakened the Queens Private Lines struggle beforehand by concluding other Private Lines contracts separately, thus preventing a united struggle. Now other Private Lines, like Command and New York Bus seem to be increasing service to take up the slack on struck lines. And the Toussaint leadership of the Local has failed to mobilize the tens of thousands of other members of the Local to support the strike. So the strikers came to the mass meeting in no mood for b.s. from the leadership.
In presenting his plan to the workers, Toussaint came across as aloof and isolated from the ranks. His approach seemed to suggest that workers should base their hopes less on the type of militant strike action they have been taking, and more on lobbying supposedly friendly politicians (more than a few of whom Toussaint had brought to the meeting). Most important, Toussaint’s long-winded speech cited so many budgetary figures and percentages that it sounded like he was trying to distract the workers from their main concerns and bury bad contract details in a mountain of useless information.
Such suspicions were apparently confirmed by the fact that the demand for an Employee Protection Plan (EPP), was missing from the proposed agreement. This plan would guarantee that each current employee would keep his or her current job, wages, benefits, pension and seniority if the City sold the franchise to a different private owner. The City government, as owner of the routes, depots and most of the busses, would have to pass this EPP into law. After over a year of lobbying by the Local 100 leadership, the City Council claimed that they cannot pass the EPP into law for several years, when the Mayor gets the power to sell the Private Lines. So the City Council passed a resolution only promising to grant an EPP at an unspecified future date. This is bull and the strikers know it. The politicians can get together and pass laws when ever they really want to. This is just a tactic by the politicians to avoid passing into law the job protections the strikers demand. Workers want to know: Why can’t this “veto-proof majority” pass a binding EPP now?! The strike can win the EPP now so workers don’t face attacks on their jobs in the future.
With the strikers burning mad at Toussaint, Local 100 Private Lines Vice-President George Jennings jumped to the head of their revolt. In contrast to Toussaint’s tedious speech, Jennings struck the tone of a fighter. He condemned the Local leadership for relying on the vague promises of politicians for a future EPP, instead of nailing it down already. And he denounced them for not bringing out the ranks of the whole Local in support of the strike. He then declared the meeting over and led a walk-out that was supported by the majority, who stormed out chanting “We want job protection now!“
RTW shares the strikers’ disgust at Toussaint’s double-talk. But for Jennings to lead a walk-out was not the way to move forward. The fighting unity of the union against the bosses and Mayor is key. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t argue over how best to conduct the strike or resist any attempts to sell it out — we must! But it requires every effort to unite workers around a program of winning demands and militant action.
Given the support of the majority of the strikers, the contract could have been voted down. Moreover, Jennings could have raised motions making the EPP an immediate, non-negotiable demand. And he could have raised a motion officially demanding that the Local leadership mobilize the whole Local to win the strike. But Jennings didn’t do any of that. In fact it seems that his outburst was the first time many workers had even heard his criticisms of the way the Toussaint leadership has conducted the strike!
Instead, Jennings’s walkout divided the strikers and threatened to split the Local. He made this clear by threatening a split of the Private Lines workers away from Local 100, although he explained that he wanted to remain inside the TWU (he has since withdrawn this threat).
Jennings’s approach seems more calculated to take advantage of the strikers’ anger at Toussaint so as to strengthen his own bureaucratic position. After all, Jennings is closely linked to President Sonny Hall. In fact Hall was so concerned for Jennings after most of the James Gang got swept out of office that he made him an International Vice President on top of his Local 100 position.
The old-Hall/Willie James bureaucracy that Jennings was part of ran the Local into the ground and stuck us with one bad contract after another. Although he is one of the few top leaders of the Local who has actually participated in some strikes, Jennings has long favored lobbying politicians over mass-mobilizing the ranks. Thus Jennings seems more concerned with trying to weaken Toussaint & Co.’s position in the union and strengthen his own, than with leading the strike to victory.
So Private Lines strikers shouldn’t trust Jennings’s recent militancy. Nonetheless, his defiance of Toussaint’s leadership has enhanced his reputation among many workers. Militants should test him by demanding that he actually fight to mobilize the whole Local to win the strike.
And now that Jennings’ buddy Sonny Hall has intervened in negotiations, strikers should ask whether Hall is more interested in dealing with the bosses and the City or supporting the strike. If Hall’s real concern is with the strikers, he’ll immediately provide them with full strike benefits from the International’s coffers, and he’ll get the International to throw its resources behind a mass demonstration in support of the strike.
The Private Lines strikers’ determination to win their demands is an inspiration to the whole Local and to the entire New York City working class. In rejecting Toussaint’s sellout deal and continuing their strike, they’re showing the sort of militancy it takes for workers to defend their living standards against the bosses and politicians who try to screw more out of us every day.
But after over a month on strike, with a leadership that’s not really supporting them, the strike is losing momentum. However, it’s not too late to win. There are some immediate measures we could take. For example, the Private Lines pickets at closed garages have not had much of an effect. The Local 100 oppositional paper Rank and File Advocate has raised the good idea of picketing places where there will be a real impact. In particular, City Hall should be the target of regular pickets to expose Mayor Bloomberg for forcing the strike. Strikers should mobilize to demand that the union officials support this tactic and organize it.
But for the Private Lines strike to win, it has to go to a new level, and that means mobilizing the whole union’s power behind the strike. The Toussaint leadership was shaken by the strikers’ walkout and can be pressured to mobilize the Local in the actions required to win.
Delegations of Private Lines strikers have already been visiting NYCT workers’ job sites and union meetings and have received a warm reception. Private Lines strikers should push to expand this campaign, demand that V.P. Jennings and other Private Lines union officers throw their weight behind it, and use the opportunity to urge their Sisters and Brothers to support a clear call for mass action by the whole Local to support the strike.
For example, RTW has demanded from Day One that the Toussaint leadership mobilize the thousands of other Local members in a mass demonstration. In RTW No. 8 we argued that the Local should:
build for a mass march soon, across the Brooklyn Bridge during rush hour to show the power that workers can wield.... A serious, ongoing Solidarity Campaign could get hundreds or thousands more Local 100 members, NYCT and Private Lines, out marching, picketing and putting the fear of God into the billionaire capitalist Mayor, the millionaire capitalist Private Lines owners and the rest of the capitalists and their politicians. It could bring the strike to a quick and successful end.
Private Lines workers could encourage other Local members to raise motions in their division meetings for such a demonstration, and circulate the petition that’s going around demanding that the Local 100 leadership organize it.
Of course one massive demonstration by the Local that ties up traffic and targets Mayor Bloomberg may not be enough to win the strike. So it should be viewed as the beginning of a campaign of mass protests.
NYCT workers’ Health Benefit Trust is on the verge of collapse and their contract expires in December. The Private Lines strike has strong sympathy in the rest of the Local, and NYCT workers know a victory there is necessary to prepare for their own fight. So NYCT workers have every reason to actively support the Private Lines strike.
The looming NYCT workers’ contract struggle is also the reason why a mobilization of the whole Local could be such a powerful weapon in support of the Queens strike. The bosses and politicians are scared to death of a possible transit strike shutting the city down at the end of the year and would be eager to defuse growing militancy among NYCT workers.
In fact, NYCT workers have shown that they want to more actively support the Private Lines strike, and that what’s missing is top-union leadership to organize the fight. For example, when Private Lines strikers recently visited the Coney Island Yards Overhaul Shop lunchroom, a trackworker supporter of RTW urged a Local-wide march across the Brooklyn Bridge. The suggestion got applause and cheers from the hundreds of Car Maintenance workers present. Car Maintenance V.P. Neil Persaud also said that he supported this idea. But when pressed on whether he would actually fight in the union for the action to be organized, Persaud didn’t commit himself.
Private Lines workers who want to see their struggle hit the bosses and politicians harder and spread throughout the Local must demand that their leaders make every effort to achieve this. NYCT workers must put similar pressure on their leaders, from Shop Stewards to Division leaders and Executive Board members. Take every opportunity to press them to support a mass demonstration by the Local to support the strike, and make them promise to raise motions to that effect at the highest levels they can.
NYCT workers particularly need to pressure elected leaders around Rank and File Advocate (R& FA). These “militants” like RTO Executive Board member Steve Downs and Local 100 Recording Secretary Noel Acevedo, have been speaking in support of ideas for taking the strike forward that are similar to some of those we are proposing. But so far we have not seen any evidence that they are really fighting for such actions at Division Executive Board meetings. Workers should tell them to put up or shut up!
If Private Lines strikers spread their call for action among Transit workers throughout the Local, there will be a groundswell of support for the Local to take action. If members corner officials everywhere they go with demands for the whole Local to take mass action in support of the Private Lines strike, we can pressure them to organize the actions we need to win the strike.
A victory in the strike will do much more than secure the Private Lines workers’ living and working conditions. It will unite and strengthen the whole Local in preparation for the big battles to come at the end of the year over the NYCT workers’ contract.