NY TWU Local 100 Tops Endorse Spitzer

Toussaint Backs His Jailer

Talk about sleeping with the enemy. Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 president Roger Toussaint and the Local 100 Executive Board recently endorsed Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic New York state gubernatorial candidate. The same Spitzer who, as New York State Attorney General during the three-day transit strike last December against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), slammed the union with injunctions and massive fines of a million dollars a day. The same Spitzer who threw Toussaint in jail for four days for leading Local 100 on strike in defiance of the state’s anti-labor Taylor Law! The endorsement is no case of forgetfulness but a conscious policy of class collaboration by the craven, pro-capitalist trade-union bureaucracy.

Last year’s strike by the nearly 34,000 transit workers sent shock waves throughout New York City, the world financial capital, showing the social power of labor and showing, in particular, the strategic power of Local 100. A barrage of threats and attacks by Republican governor George Pataki and mayor Michael Bloomberg couldn’t undermine the support that many blacks, Latinos and other working people in New York City and beyond gave the strike. They saw in it a blow struck on their behalf against the racist capitalist rulers who continue to grind them down. But city labor leaders, from NYC Central Labor Council president Brian McLaughlin to United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, did their best to get the strikers back to work. The strike was called off after three days by Toussaint and the Local 100 leadership, and the TWU is still without a contract ten months later.

The pro-Democratic Party Local 100 leadership saved much of its ire in the post-strike period for MTA head Peter Kalikow and Governor Pataki. “Day of Action” protests by the union over the past few months, which have let workers angered over the lack of a contract blow off some steam, have been touted by the union leadership as a way to pressure the MTA and the governor to settle the contract. In fact, they have been little more than pro-Spitzer rallies, with the union leadership banking on his election to get a contract. The last “Day of Action” is scheduled for November 7, with the “action” being, vote Spitzer. In Toussaint’s own words, “If the MTA no longer has the Governor’s Mansion backing for every last slap at workers and riders, then our fight has the possibility of gaining more traction and yielding broader results” (Local 100 Express, September 2006). Photos of Spitzer are all over the current “Special Issue” of Local 100 Express.

The so-called “opposition” leaders running against the current Local 100 leadership in upcoming union elections have said nothing against the union’s support to Spitzer, which shows their own support for the capitalist system. Executive Board member Marty Goodman, who is supported by the reformist group Socialist Action, denounces Spitzer as a “fake progressive.” But Goodman shows his own support for the capitalist system, its state and politicians by praising the capitalist Green Party candidates for state attorney general and governor who claim they would “never sign an injunction against Local 100.” Maybe he should tell that to Socialist Action leader Jeff Mackler, who is running for U.S. Senate in California against the Greens as well as the Democrats.

By calling for a vote to Spitzer, the union tops are undermining the very purpose of the union: to defend the interests of the workers against the bosses. Spitzer enforced the Taylor Law fines, making workers shell out six days’ pay as punishment for striking. But some workers have argued that he was just doing his job. As attorney general, Spitzer was doing his job by upholding the anti-union laws and trying in the process to cripple this multiracial union, whose largely black and immigrant members stood shoulder to shoulder with their white co-workers during the strike. As governor, Spitzer will continue to defend the interests of the bosses.

Under capitalism there are two fundamental classes in society: the capitalist class and the working class, whose interests are irreconcilably counterposed. As we wrote in a Workers Vanguard supplement titled “NYC Transit Strike: Union Power vs. Class Collaboration” (reprinted in WV No. 861, 6 January):

“Like every major strike, this was a bullheaded battle between labor and capital. On one side are the bosses, their government, whether run by Democrats or Republicans, and the repressive capitalist state apparatus, mainly the courts and cops. The role of the courts and government officials during the strike starkly demonstrated that the ‘democratic’ trappings of the capitalist state are but a facade for the dictatorship of the exploiting class. On the other side, the workers have their own weapons: their numbers and power based on their collective labor at the workplace, and their union organization.”

The arrogant MTA bosses underestimated the determination of the TWU workers to fight back against union-busting attacks. The Local 100 leadership under Toussaint led a brief but powerful display of the social power of the TWU workers, but at bottom showed their pro-capitalist, class-collaborationist program. This program preaches the lie of the partnership between labor and capital and helps uphold the decaying capitalist system responsible for the racist and political frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the reactionary “war on terror,” the brutal occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and the racist atrocity of New Orleans, where masses of overwhelmingly black and poor people were left to die in the face of Hurricane Katrina.

A fight to forge a class-struggle leadership in the unions is necessary—a leadership that will fight for a workers party independent of and opposed to all the parties of the capitalist class, that will stand up for the interests of workers and all the oppressed. To end this racist capitalist system requires the building of a multiracial workers party to lead the struggle for socialist revolution, burying capitalism once and for all.