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	Workers Vanguard No. 1144	16 November 2018

For a Fighting Union!

NYC Transit Workers Under Fire

TWU Local 100 Elections: Sellouts and Fakers

The 41,000 members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, who have begun to vote for union officers, desperately need a fighting leadership. It has been well over a year since New York governor Andrew Cuomo declared New York City’s decrepit subway system to be in a “state of emergency.” The transit crisis made world news last summer as the public fumed over trains delayed or canceled due to power outages, faulty switches, equipment failures, crumbling tunnels and worn-out tracks. Andy Byford, who had been brought in after his stint as Toronto transit chief to run the NYC system, has tried to “fix” things by forcing more deadly speedup on the workforce, just as he did in his last job.

Transit workers grimly joke that the “summer of hell” has been extended to all four seasons. The “state of emergency” was a pretext for driving workers harder and longer under hazardous conditions. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), a New York State agency, has relaxed safety rules to get trains and buses up and running faster, a major factor in the death of bus helper Stephen Livecchi in Queens in March. Train runs are being scheduled to cut out break time. With budget cuts looming, scores of cleaner, track inspector and customer service booth agent jobs are on the chopping block, promising even filthier trains and more dangerous tracks and stations. Meanwhile, assaults on workers, including by the cops, have spiked.

As we wrote in “NYC Subway Shambles” (WV No. 1123, 1 December 2017), responsibility for this disaster lies with the bankers, Democratic and Republican politicians and MTA bosses “who have let things go to hell, while making working conditions miserable” for Local 100 members. The ruling class has long refused to shell out what’s needed for good, functional mass transit in its own financial center. This is a sure sign of the irrationality of the capitalist profit system that has let this whole country’s infrastructure rot away.

Overworked and underpaid, TWU Local 100, along with members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, are the ones who keep the subways and buses running. This gives transit workers enormous potential power to fight for decent wages and working conditions, for more jobs and better service on behalf of the city’s millions of working people. To do that means taking on the MTA bosses and the government they answer to. And that requires fighting against the program of a supposed partnership with the bosses and their political parties that has defined generations of Local 100 bureaucrats and undermined the power of this union. But none of the slates in the union elections offer a way forward.

The current leadership under Tony Utano is widely reviled for bootlicking service to the MTA brass. While Utano is an acolyte of former Local 100 president (now TWU International president) John Samuelsen, some of his opponents style themselves after Roger Toussaint, Samuelsen’s predecessor in the Local 100 bureaucracy. All of the contenders support the capitalist Democratic Party. Utano endorsed Cuomo, an enemy of public workers unions, in this year’s gubernatorial primary. Others favored Cynthia Nixon, who began her campaign by attacking transit and construction workers before figuring out that donning a “pro-union” mask was a better way to keep workers tied to the Democrats. With the Local 100 contract due to expire in May, none of the slates make a point of opposing New York’s Taylor Law, which bans strikes by NYC transit workers and other state employees.

These elections are basically a contest over who gets to act as labor lieutenants for the MTA and the governor. The TWU, like the rest of the labor movement, needs a leadership that fights it out class against class, independent of and in opposition to all political parties and state agencies of the capitalist enemy.

No to “Law and Order” Unionism!

Anyone who rides the subways knows that the homeless population on the trains and in the stations has mushroomed in recent years. Tossed onto capitalism’s scrap heap, many of the homeless suffer mental illness, aggravating their desperate state. Occasional confrontations resulting from this situation come on top of the rise in physical assaults on subway personnel by members of the public enraged over delays and service breakdowns. In the guise of protecting workers, the Local 100 bureaucrats have joined with management to whip up support for more cops to beat down the homeless and suspected wrongdoers (read minority youth). Wanted posters cosigned by the TWU and MTA have gone up in terminals with pictures of black and Latino “perps.” Utano echoes the bosses’ calls to equip workers with body cams, a scheme to both spy on workers and aid police attacks on the homeless and others.

The Progressive Action (PA) caucus of Tramell Thompson also calls for more repression of the homeless, who are being driven out of the stations at the same time that “progressive” Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio is cracking down on people sleeping on the streets. Thompson, whose base is among younger train operators and conductors, seeks to appeal particularly to black workers who bear the brunt of the MTA’s notorious “plantation justice” disciplinary system. Yet this supposed “militant,” a supporter of Black Lives Matter, complains that none of those on the wanted posters are getting caught and wants more cops deployed in transit. The result would be further brutalization of the poor and more union victims like Kiyya Rivera, a female train conductor viciously assaulted by the NYPD in 2016, and black station agent Darryl Goodwin, hounded to death after he didn’t open a subway gate fast enough for the cops.

In the worst tradition of Samuelsen, Toussaint and other Local 100 misleaders, Thompson lauds the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) as a strong “union,” painting the cops as fellow trade unionists. These are deadly lies! The cops are the hired thugs of racist capitalist “law and order.” Their job is to break strikes, terrorize blacks and other minorities and repress any struggle against this rotten system. The police have no place in the labor movement! Neither do their security guard auxiliaries. Transit Property Protection Agents out of the TWU! The union has no business collaborating with the cops in any crackdown against the homeless.

Tirades against the homeless by the Local 100 tops and their would-be replacements serve the bosses by pitting transit workers against the poor. The hysteria over crime diverts attention from the real source of violence and abuse of workers: the capitalist exploiters, their government and their cops.

Because of its reach throughout the city, the TWU can win broad public support for its struggles against the MTA slave drivers. By the same token, the union should be a leading force in the fight for a massive public works program; for free mass transit; for health care and decent jobs for the unemployed and working poor, many of whom are one missed paycheck away from being tossed onto the streets. Union power must be mobilized against the fascist race-terrorists, as happened on a small scale in 1999 when the Partisan Defense Committee initiated a labor/black mobilization against the KKK in NYC. It is through class struggle that the unions can be revitalized and rebuilt in this country, where the ruling class has waged war against the workers with virtually no resistance from labor “leaders.”

This perspective is integral to building a workers party that fights for a workers government. By expropriating the bankers, the real estate barons and the rest of the capitalist class, the workers in power would use this society’s productive wealth to rebuild cities and crucial infrastructure, providing jobs, quality health care and integrated housing and schools for all.

Labor Fakers Play Bosses’ Game

Thompson’s Progressive Action often complains about higher pay and “different disciplines” for workers at the MTA-operated Metro-North and Long Island Railroad (LIRR) regional commuter lines. Thompson says that the MTA treats LIRR workers better because they are mostly white whereas whites are a minority in the heavily black, Latino and immigrant workforce of NYC transit. In fact, the MTA is out to squeeze all its workers. “Plantation justice” at NYC transit exemplifies the racist discrimination the capitalists have long used to divide labor and weaken its struggles. While hitting black workers the hardest, the MTA overseers crack this whip to drive the entire workforce to the limit.

The way to fight back is through racially integrated union struggle. But Thompson’s answer is to look to the government for redress, calling on the Justice Department, the top enforcer of racist “law and order,” to “look into the situations” at NYC transit and the regional rail lines. If the Justice Department or any other arm of the capitalist state were to intervene, it would be to weaken union job protections, fueling a race to the bottom for all workers. That is also the case when the courts are invited into union affairs in the name of “union democracy,” as various TWU out-bureaucrats have done over the years.

To fight racist discrimination, and improve conditions for the entire workforce, the transit union needs to flex its muscle and show its collective power. Joint labor struggle by regional rail workers, who are divided among many craft unions, and transit workers is necessary to achieve equal wages and benefits at the highest level for all. United labor action could also lay the basis for a single industrial union embracing all rail, subway and bus workers in the area.

The Local 100 bureaucracy has betrayed that prospect over and over again. A key example was the December 2005 NYC transit strike, a demonstration of the union’s power. Carried out at the height of the holiday shopping season, the walkout stunned the arrogant capitalist rulers and drew immediate blowback from the government. Democratic state attorney general Eliot Spitzer issued Taylor Law injunctions and billionaire Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg called strike leaders “thuggish,” a clear attempt to stir up racist animosity against Local 100 and its leader at the time, Roger Toussaint, a black Trinidadian.

Local 100 was stabbed in the back by the TWU International and the city’s labor officials, who pressured the union to end the strike. But the strike was cheered by working people throughout the city, not least in the ghettos and barrios. Despite this popular support, the Toussaint leadership, which Thompson falsely paints as “militant,” did not appeal to regional transit workers to walk out in support of the TWU. Here was Toussaint, who sued the union on his way to becoming president, up against the strikebreaking courts. After less than three days, he folded, sending fired-up union members back to work with no contract in hand and massive legal reprisals hanging over their heads. The courts went on to slam individual strikers and Local 100 with heavy fines and even jailed Toussaint for a short time. Ending the walkout while it was solid was deeply corrosive to the union. At one point, up to half the membership had stopped paying dues.

Toussaint’s successor, Samuelsen, renounced the 2005 strike entirely. A slavish supporter of Cuomo, Samuelsen kept Local 100 members working under an expired contract from 2012 to 2014. At the same time, he talked about supporting a potential strike on the LIRR. But when the nearly 6,000 LIRR workers voted to strike in 2014, Samuelsen knifed them in the back by cooking up a concessionary Local 100 contract with Cuomo, which put pressure on LIRR workers to settle. True to form, the MTA announced that it would pay for minuscule TWU raises by skipping payments to the underfunded LIRR pension plan.

The Samuelsen regime also pitted Local 100 members against each other by acceding to the Tier 6 pension “reform” for new hires. This measure has jacked up deductions from wages for the pension fund and introduced wage caps and restrictions aimed at slashing pension benefits. With Utano calling to “fix Tier 6” by lobbying Albany, the various opposition slates call at most to “fix or nix” it. Union militants must oppose all wage and benefit tier schemes, which erode the very purpose of unions by pitting veteran workers against younger ones. Equal pay for equal work! Full benefits for all!

Thompson has done his bit to divide the union by resorting to race-baiting, going after John Ferretti and Seth Rosenberg, who are associated with the former Revolutionary Transit Worker (RTW) outfit supported by the League for the Revolutionary Party. In response to their occasional verbal militancy, Thompson denounces them as whites with “weird politics” who are trying to rope in unsuspecting black TWU members. Such demagogy serves the MTA bosses, pure and simple.

In fact, Ferretti and Rosenberg are opportunists like their RTW forebears who backed the union-suer Toussaint. The two had offered to toss out their self-declared principles in order to reach a “compromise on points of unity” as part of the PA slate. Spurned by Thompson, they then proposed that all of Utano’s opponents run a common slate, thereby offering to support any other pro-Democratic Party sellout. Now running as “Local 100 Fightback,” Ferretti and Rosenberg give their own backhanded support to the “lesser evil” capitalist party by their calls for the TWU to join the Democrats’ anti-Trump “resistance.”

The class collaboration that defines the Local 100 bureaucracy and its current challengers reinforces “plantation justice” at the MTA. Workers need a leadership that will fight against the bosses’ racist divide-and-rule schemes with the tools and methods of class struggle.