Labor Must Defend NYC Transit Unions!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

We print below, slightly excerpted, a January 9 letter by the Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—to unions throughout the U.S. and internationally urging solidarity with the New York City transit workers. Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 and Amalgamated Transit Union locals 726 and 1056 are facing massive legal reprisals for conducting a powerful three-day strike in U.S. capitalism’s financial center in December. For their defiance of the state’s anti-strike Taylor Law, the unions are threatened with huge fines and the jailing of their leaders.

In addition, the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), a state agency appointed by the governor, threatens to fine strikers six days pay (two days for each day on strike). The PERB may also move to revoke the dues checkoff, by which union dues are automatically deducted from paychecks. This blatant attack on the unions must be fought. At the same time, union members should fight to replace this system, by which the bosses control dues collection, with collection by elected union officers. This would also be a means of making the union leadership accountable to the members.

The drive to “punish” the transit unions continues to be whipped up, with calls to jail Local 100 president Roger Toussaint by Republican gubernatorial candidate William Weld. The unions will be in court on January 20. That same day, the results of the vote on the proposed contract settlement by Local 100’s 33,700 members are due to be announced. If the contract is voted down, there must be a mass membership meeting to decide what course of action to take, up to and including resuming strike action. The union should reject binding arbitration, an option under the Taylor Law, as Local 100 leaders said they would before the strike began. Binding arbitration is a trap, in which the union membership is cut out and decisions on the contract are made by three “mediators” whose selection is weighted toward the bosses and their government.

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On January 20, Transport Workers Union Local 100 and Amalgamated Transit Union Locals 726 and 1056 are scheduled to appear in court, facing devastating fines of up to $1 million a day and a possible $1,000 a day against individual union officers in retaliation for their recent strike. The threat of jailing TWU Local 100 president Roger Toussaint and other union officers has not been taken off the table. These unions went on strike for three days, December 20-22, in a struggle for a new contract. This was both a courageous and effective defensive action, in defiance of the vicious anti-union Taylor Law which prohibits public employees in the state of New York from striking. The outrageous penalties, fines and possible jail sentences have been leveled at the union for “contempt of court” violations of the injunctions against the strike under the Taylor Law.

All of labor must stand in defense of these workers! We must demand that all charges be dropped against the TWU and ATU locals! No fines—no reprisals! Down with the slave-labor Taylor Law! The transit workers must not stand alone—an injury to one is an injury to all!

The outpouring of support for the New York City transit strike by the city’s working and poor people showed that they saw the transit workers fight as their own. Workers in this country are becoming increasingly angry over being robbed of their pensions and benefits, having their rights trampled, facing increased abuse on the job and having their working conditions and standard of living eroded. The horrendous death of 12 miners in West Virginia, employed at a non-union mine run by profit-gouging bosses, is the real face of the one-sided class war being waged by the rulers. Under the pretext of its phony “war on terror,” the government has victimized blacks, Latinos and immigrants while intensifying the exploitation of workers and attacking unions across the board. The transit workers’ defiance of anti-union laws and the threatened reprisals for their strike show what every union faces when they strike and are confronted with strike-breaking injunctions. The bosses are on an offensive against labor—from the UFCW strikers of Southern California to the AMFA strikers at Northwest Airlines to ILA and ILWU longshoremen to GM and Delphi auto workers. Like the Railway Labor Act, the Maritime Security Act, the Patriot Act, Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin, the Taylor Law is crafted to chain the working class and prevent effective union actions to defend workers from stepped-up exploitation.

As an elementary act of solidarity with the transit workers who dared to stand up, walk out and give the bosses a taste of the tremendous social power of the organized workers movement, the PDC is sending a letter of protest to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer is a Democratic candidate for governor, who went to court to slam TWU officers and members with injunctions carrying union-busting fines and seeking to jail union officers. We are also sending letters of protest to Republican governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg who supported these draconian anti-union actions and engaged in vile, anti-worker, racist invective against the striking transit workers—many of whom are black, Latino, immigrant. We urge you to add your voice to this effort to defend the brothers and sisters who struck in December before the next scheduled court date of 20 January.

In addition to a letter or letters of protest to the Attorney General, Governor and Mayor demanding that there be no reprisals, no fines, we also urge that you forward these protest letters with a message of solidarity to TWU Local 100, ATU Local 726 and ATU Local 1056.

Down with the Taylor Law! For union solidarity with the New York City transit workers!