For three days in December, 34,000 members of the Transport Workers Union shut down New York City’s subway and bus system at the peak of the holiday season. The strike came after the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency that runs the vast transit city system, introduced a last-minute demand during contract negotiations that would have introduced significantly increased pension payments for new hires.
 Photo: Richard B. Levine |
It was a tremendous display of the power of the working class. Millions of workers in New York and around the world witnessed the simple truth—continuously and consciously covered up by the rich and powerful—that it is working people and not the bankers and landlords who make the city run.
And although the final settlement that ended the strike was mixed, the TWU did push back the most hated of the MTA’s demands, and sent a clear signal that the bosses’ arrogance could be met and matched by the strength of a determined union membership.
Most of all, the strike gave a glimpse of what might be achieved in battles ahead should the labor movement take up the challenges of reversing the anti-labor offensive that has characterized the last 30 years.
Facing the bosses’ offensive
From the beginning, the union’s contract struggle was a battleground in the overall struggle by the city’s biggest financial and real estate interests to drive down city workers’ living conditions. In every municipal workers union contract negotiations, the city and state had managed to keep financial settlements to a minimum while imposing severe givebacks.
One of the city’s key demands in contract negotiations had been two-tiered wage and benefit structures, where new hires would earn significantly less than current employees. It is a scheme that ultimately weakens the union and drives down wages and benefits for all workers, eroding gains made over years of struggle.
The MTA demands followed this trend, despite the fact that the authority was registering a $1 billion budget surplus. A key concession they were seeking was to raise the retirement age for new hires by seven years, from 55 to 62. The union leadership took the position that they would not agree to any two-tier wage or benefit concession.
TWU Local 100 represents the subway conductors, bus drivers, station cleaners, token booth clerks and a host of other workers on the transit system. The membership is primarily African American and Latino.
Some 7 million people ride New York City mass transit every day.
The transit workers’ contract expired on Dec. 15. In the weeks leading up to the deadline, thousands of TWU members and their allies mobilized with informational pickets and a Dec. 10 mass rally at New York’s Javits Center. The 5,000 workers at the rally voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if the negotiations failed.
 Roger Toussaint, president of TWU Local 100, was the target of an intense racist and anti-union media campaign for leading the strike. Photo: Reuters/Peter Foley |
Over and over, TWU leaders—from President Roger Toussaint to the rank-and-file shop stewards—brought up the union’s militant history.
On Dec. 15, the TWU leadership extended negotiations for four days. By all accounts, the union made gains in pushing back the MTA’s giveback demands. But at the 11th hour before the new Dec. 19 deadline, MTA chair Peter Kalikow introduced a new demand: that new hires pay an extra 4 percent of their wages toward their pension plans.
It was a clear provocation to the union leadership, who had pledged not to agree to any two-tier system. The MTA, billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York governor George Pataki clearly calculated that the union leadership would fold.
They miscalculated. In the early hours of Dec. 20, the subways and buses came to a complete halt.
A class battle
The three-day strike had all the features of an all-out class battle.
The MTA presents itself as a public authority. In reality, it is an agency that represents the interests of the city’s top financial and real estate interests. Its members are appointed by the governor, not elected.
Kalikow, the MTA chair, is a billionaire real estate owner and former owner of the right-wing daily New York Post. The two vice chairs are a real estate executive and a former executive of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, an investment house.
Of course, both Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg ultimately answer to the big financial and corporate interests in New York.
So when the strike began, the corporate media launched an all-out, racist propaganda campaign against the union and the union leadership. Bloomberg called Toussaint and the other union leaders “thugs.” Blaring headlines called for jailing union leaders. Unlike “business as usual,” when the media tries to portray a range of opinions from liberal to conservative, all the press spoke with one voice against the strike.
The ruling class also brought the weight of the anti-labor Taylor Law against the union. The Taylor Law provides for heavy fines against public-sector union leaders and members that walk off the job, including a fine on each striking union member of two days pay for each day on strike. It also carries the threat of jailing union leaders and ending dues checkoff for a period even after the strike ends, potentially crippling the union’s ability to operate.
The Taylor Law penalties exposed the anti-worker role of the whole capitalist state—the role of its police, courts and laws. During a concentrated class struggle like the TWU strike, threats and repression are brought to bear against the working class. The law is only a codification of the interests of the banks and big property owners to defend their privileges and domination.
On the other side of the class barricades, the TWU membership solidly backed the strike, despite the media hysteria and the threats of fines. While there were reports of a few scabs, not enough union workers crossed picket lines to have any impact on the MTA’s ability to run the buses and subways.
And despite the rabid propaganda campaign, polls taken every day during the strike showed strong support—up to 60 percent—for the striking workers among the riding public, despite the severe inconveniences for people trying to get to work. Support was especially high among the Black community, where the mayor’s racist diatribes and the union’s invoking of the Civil Rights struggle resonated strongly. Union members—white, Black and Latino—also strongly supported the TWU.
Hundreds of union activists and others took time out to make their way to the dozens of picket lines that were set up at each bus and train depot.
While class solidarity among New York City’s workers was running high, the leadership of the organized labor movement was slow to respond. Union leaders held a press conference on Dec. 22 alongside Roger Toussaint in a show of support. And the New York City Central Labor Council pledged on Dec. 18 to raise $1.5 million—$1 from each city union member—to supplement the TWU’s strike fund.
That fund never materialized. Nor did city unions mobilize their members to build support for the transit workers.
Local 100’s international parent union disavowed the strike entirely. It was a cowardly betrayal that played into the hands of the bosses’ propaganda campaign against the strike.
So, a vast pool of class solidarity and material support went largely untapped.
Pension demands defeated
In that climate, facing the between-holiday business slump when the strike’s impact would lessen, Toussaint announced a settlement on Dec. 22. From a tactical point of view, the decision to end the strike was correct given the balance of forces at that moment.
The MTA was forced to take the two-tier pension demand off the table—a clear victory for the union. The workers also made a number of other gains, including a paid Martin Luther King holiday, stipends for maternity leave and an independent investigation into the MTA’s hated “plantation justice” disciplinary system.
One provision of the settlement guarantees that half of the union members will receive payouts of between $8,000 and $14,000 for past overpayments into the pension system. This created an uproar among right-wing politicians, saying that it “rewarded lawbreakers.” They were referring to the fact that this amount would more than cover the fines that the transit workers incurred during the strike.
But the settlement included concessions as well. All union members will pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health care. The term of the contract was extended by one month, putting the next contract expiration out of the holiday season and diminishing the impact of a future strike. The new expiration date will have symbolic significance, though—Jan. 15, 2009, is the 80th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth.
“You could never have a total victory unless you’re on the eve of a revolution,” Toussaint told the Jan. 6 Chief-Leader newspaper.
Changing the balance of forces
Although the actual gains of the contract were limited, the strike was a victory from the perspective of changing the dynamics of the class struggle in New York City. After all, a union contract is a snapshot of the balance of class forces in the ongoing struggle between workers and bosses over the terms of labor’s exploitation.
A contract struggle, while being in some ways the most basic form of class struggle, is not a revolutionary struggle. It is a struggle for the terms of labor’s exploitation—not over the abolition of labor’s exploitation. In this sense, the real struggle is over how to achieve the best possible terms in a given context within a given relationship of class forces.
Within this balance of forces, the working class is always at a disadvantage. In the case of the TWU strike, the union was facing off not just against some city agency. It was facing the whole New York City ruling class. It was facing the entire weight of the state—the cops and courts.
Under capitalism, this is the inevitable battleground. Whatever gains can be made in a given situation carry a cost.
Reversing the anti-labor offensive and the nearly three-decade legacy of concessionary contracts will not happen in one contract struggle by one union. It will require a coordinated strategy that brings to bear the power of the working class, organized and unorganized.
The TWU strike was an important step in that direction, however. It shows that workers have tremendous power and have the ability to stand up to the most vicious attacks—even against the whole ruling class. Other unions can be encouraged that it is possible to stand up to the bosses, face off against the anti-labor Taylor law and similar laws in other states and turn back concessionary demands.
To the extent that those lessons are learned, the working class will gain confidence in its ability to struggle—an important ingredient in changing the balance of class forces in the city, and potentially in the national labor movement.
Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine.
