Who framed Roger Toussaint?

What a difference a month makes. Then TWU Local 100 ended their illegal strike, Roger Toussaint was being hailed by one pundit as “No question, hands down” New Yorker of the year. Former TWU advisor Joseph Rappaport was quoted in one newspaper, calling the proposed contract, “a near-total victory for Roger Toussaint.” The Governor was angry, and the union’s leadership was pleased.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the contract: It got voted down. Toussaint, whose union has reminded us that transit workers, like other New Yorkers, don’t vote in great numbers, and by a Florida-slim margin of seven votes, seven million MTA riders have one more thing to worry about.
So who is to blame for this mess?
Toussaint declared “We believe this result is a byproduct of negative and inappropriate interferences.”
It has been suggested that Governor Pataki’s public criticism of the settlement, Mayor Bloomberg’s “thuggish” remark, and editorials in the Daily News and the New York Post are to blame.
But the fact is that elected officials and editorial boards don’t purport to represent the membership of TWU Local 100. The Transit workers are the ones who voted in Toussaint and his “New Directions” slate of officials, and the workers are the ones who voted, or didn’t vote for or against the proposed contract. It wasn’t up to the media to campaign for a yes vote on the contract. It was up to Toussaint.
It isn’t fair to cast people who only get 20 minutes for lunch, who are expected to sit in token booths no bigger than jail cells without getting distracted or napping, or to clean up the mess that riders leave behind, as villains.
If the average New Yorker had to spend a week walking the tracks in subway tunnels which compare unfavorably to the sewers of Paris, they might be inclined to support a leader who summed up “the cultural problem” with the MTA as, “what we call a plantation justice mentality that says the way to get an employee to work is to stand with a whip over them.”
But it isn’t the riding public who pay a subsidized fare, or the businesses and home buyers who created the subsidy that accounted for virtually the entire $1 billion surplus, who ignored the recommendation of the union leadership.
It isn’t the MTA or elected officials who held the whip over the entire city, or rose to power on old-time fiery labor rhetoric. It was Toussaint, and his “New Directions” slate.
So now, Toussaint is looking for directions “back to the drawing board.” Unfortunately, the direction things seem to be heading in is to a three-member Arbitration Board. If that happens, the “victories” claimed by the union will come off the table, and the membership won’t get to vote on the contract at all. The next time they’ll get to vote will be for leadership of the union.
Pataki and Bloomberg won’t be on that ballot. Rep. Charlie Rangel and State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, both of whom received contributions from TWU Local 100, won’t be voting. Toussaint and his slate will be on the ballot, and the union members who stand to lose nine days pay for no contract will be voting.
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to figure out who they will blame.