Bravo!

Juan Gonzalez's column for the Daily News

Eventful time for the union
Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

The designated strike captains of Transport Workers Union Local 100 streamed quietly into their headquarters on Manhattan's West Side beginning around noon yesterday.

There, in a sixth-floor conference room bustling with TWU staffers, each captain picked up batches of picket signs, flyers and final orders, then headed for one of the 40 MTA depots around the city that union leaders had marked for total shutdown at 12:01 this morning.

The preparations for the first city transit strike in 25 years were so detailed that they dispelled any doubt that union President Roger Toussaint was serious about a possible walkout - even if the TWU and its leaders risked massive fines and jail under the Taylor Law.

"We have an entire secret leadership in place of nonofficers to carry on the strike if Roger and others are not around," one union leader told me.

The plans even included an alternate command center in case a court order prevented union leaders from operating out of their headquarters.

In the weeks leading up to last Thursday's contract expiration, Toussaint arranged a $5million bank loan to pay for a possible walkout, secured additional money from Local 100's parent union to finance an advertising campaign and persuaded several city unions to reassign some of their paid staff to support his efforts.

Given that few leaders of the union were even around in 1980 during the last transit strike, the level of organization by the TWU has been truly amazing.

While Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg repeatedly warned the union not to even consider a strike, and while many experts predicted a crushing defeat for the union if its members walked out, Toussaint proved to be a more skillful tactician than anyone imagined.

He outflanked the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for example, by widening the conflict to include other unions in the transit system - those at Metro-North and at the private bus lines - that had gone without a contract for years.

By delaying a systemwide strike for four days and allowing more time for negotiations, Toussaint kept the city on edge. He drew greater press attention to the issues of the strike. And he appeared to be a rational and patient labor leader.

During those four days, Toussaint also managed to rally the city's entire labor movement to his side by depicting the TWU's contract as a possible trendsetter for all other public unions.
At a rally last night outside Pataki's office only hours before the new midnight deadline, Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, reminded every union member what was at stake.

In a fiery speech, Lynch talked about his own father, a former transit worker who had walked the picket lines in both the 1966 and 1980 strikes and who raised a large family into the middle class on his MTA salary.

"My father was not a criminal in 1966. He was not a criminal in 1980," Lynch said. Then he pointed to the uniformed cops on the other side of the barricade.

"Their hearts are on this side with you," he bellowed as the crowd erupted in cheers.

Then Toussaint came on stage. You saw in his eyes and you heard in his voice the look and the sound of a leader who had no fear.

"If Rosa Parks had obeyed the law, many of us who drive the buses today would still be sitting in the back of the bus," he said as the crowd went wild.

And at that moment, in the frigid cold of Third Ave., it was clear that Pataki, Bloomberg and the bureaucrats of the MTA had made a huge mistake.