The Black Commentator - Issue 182

Transit Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint began serving a ten-day jail sentence, April 24, for leading the first transit workers strike in 25 years. New York’s infamous Taylor Law forbids strikes by public employees. Toussaint’s letter was originally published in the Amsterdam News.

Were it not for the honor, I would rather be writing from my home than from a jail cell.

I am in jail because New York's transit workers were not willing to roll over and play dead when their jobs, their families' futures, and the well-being of the next generation of transit workers were all on the line.

I am in jail because I preside over a union that is not afraid to stand up to management when the interests of our members and of the riding public are at stake.

I am not in jail just for violating the Taylor Law. If that were the case, the MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority] leadership would be here with me. Their insistence on making pensions a topic of bargaining and refusing to negotiate in good faith was no smaller a violation of the Taylor Law than was our strike.

My jailing is in large part a symbolic act, undertaken because you cannot put 35,000 transit workers in jail, at least not if you want the buses and trains to run.

But the attacks against our union, the fines and loss of dues check-off, are far from symbolic. They are aimed at three goals. First, to reduce our union's strength to the point where we are unable to stand up for our members, unable to challenge management, unable to resist the economic and political interests that dictate the MTA's priorities.

Second, to imprint the memory of this on transit workers for a generation to come, so they will be afraid to stand up for their rights. Third, to warn off others in the public sector from doing the same.

As far as the MTA is concerned, if crippling our union is injurious to our members, then so be it. And make no mistake about it, this would be injurious.

New York's subways run 24 hours a day, every day. This is the condition under which our members take to the tracks to inspect, maintain and repair the equipment and the tunnels themselves. This means constant hazards to life and limb.

Every day the union's safety inspectors are traveling through the system, making sure that work is done safely, identifying hazards before hazards claim lives. Without the money to pay their salaries, these inspections could cease.

Every year over 15,000 disciplinary notices are issued, launching proceedings that could claim days of transit workers' salaries or even their jobs. Union representatives are there every day to ensure that our members get due process and are not penalized to cover up the failings of supervisors or managers, or as objects of their spite. Without the money to pay reps' salaries, that representation could falter.

But this constant presence probably offends the powers that be less than the audacity of our union in speaking out on matters of concern. Our union has fought the 'consolidation' and downsizing of bus service. Our union has fought taking conductors off the trains and station agents out of the booths. Our union has fought fare hikes. And we have won more than we have lost.

We have won as much as we have because, fighting in the interests of our riders, we have always had riders, community groups and elected officials at our side. No one is in a position to bankrupt riders, community groups and elected officials, but some may hope that crippling Local 100 financially may take us out of those fights.

It is for much the same reason that the MTA is playing games with our contract. To be sure, if the MTA can successfully force the contract into arbitration and get a second chance at winning what they could not win at the negotiating table, they will be sorely tempted to do so. And if the lame duck governor who imagines himself a presidential contender can get out of office without repaying the pension refund due to thousands of transit workers, he will certainly do so. But the motives do not end there. There is also the hope of leaving TWU Local 100 twisting in the wind, a shell of its former self and a warning to all comers. For some, this would be well worth the risk of leaving our transit system in a state of perpetual crisis.

But it is not going to play that way. Transit workers did not roll over and play dead in December and we will not do so now. We will persevere and we will prevail. And if I should find myself behind bars again, whether for ten days, a hundred or a thousand, I will accept it as an honor rather than tell my members to bow down and give up their rights and the rights of future generations.