By Philip Newman
Three members of the Transit Workers Union executive board contend that TWU President Roger Toussaint was too soft in negotiating with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and yielded on too many issues. Toussaint as well as other leaders of Local 100 of the TWU have defended the proposed new contract as providing good wage increases and resisting the MTA's strong attempt to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62, among other issues. The dissidents also complained that by sending the transit workers back to work Dec. 22 after three days on the picket line, the union leadership lost any advantage they might have held. Toussaint pointed out that the contract proposal was approved by the executive board 37-4 with one abstention. Toussaint referred to the dissenting faction as “disruptive individuals” who could damage the cause of the TWU through what he called their self-serving positions. One of the principal dissenters was John Mooney, who represents subway fare booth clerks. Mooney has been campaigning in an effort to overturn the contract proposal and presumably send both sides back to the bargaining table. Mooney, who appeared Monday at a rally of transit workers against the proposed contract agreement, was particularly vehement in opposition to the union leaders agreeing to make transit workers pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health care. So far, union members have paid nothing for health care. Toussaint said the new contract proposal further helps transit workers by providing for a refund of money the TWU employees overpaid into a pension fund. He was referring to $130 million in pension money to be refunded to 18,000 transit workers who overpaid into the pension fund from 1994 to 2001. Gov. George Pataki last week suggested he might veto the refunds. Then came word of a side deal between the TWU and the MTA under which the transit agency agreed to pay up to $150 million to the transit employees in the event Pataki tried to block the refunds. Toussaint, who used to be considered a radical, was elected president of the TWU in 2000 by a union constituency that saw the people he replaced as giving up too much to the MTA. Toussaint is to appear in a Brooklyn court later this month to learn the consequences of calling a strike that was illegal because of the Taylor Law, a New York State statute that forbids strikes by public agencies. Each striking transit worker faces heavy fines.Reach contributing writer Philip Newman by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 136.
