The executive board of TWU Local 100 narrowly voted to approve a tentative contract settlement with the state-run Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) hours after the previous contract expired at 12:01 a.m. December 15. The proposed deal includes wage increases totaling 12 percent over the three-year term of the contract. Transit workers were demanding a 27 percent raise, or 9 percent each year, along with other increases in benefits. The last public offer on wages by the MTA had been to extend the contract to a fourth year, with a 9.5 percent raise spread over that time.

The proposal also includes a decrease in the amount workers have to pay into their pensions, supposedly with no cut in benefits; some improvements in the arbitrary disciplinary procedures of the MTA that had been a major point of contention; and some work-rule concessions by the union. Very few details of the pact have been made public; workers will receive information and contract ratification ballots by mail in the coming days. The results of the vote are not expected until January.

From the beginning, the ranks of the TWU have been the key factor in the unfolding fight. One thing is clear: without the membership's resolve in pushing for their demands the MTA, whose last offer many considered to be an insult, would not have moved on the wage and benefits issues, much less on changing the disciplinary procedures transit workers are subjected to.

Workers reaction to the proposed contract is mixed. Regardless of their view on the contract issues, reaction to the anti-strike injunction among workers outside union meetings that took place December 14 was outraged.

Julio, a track worker who is Puerto Rican and who has been 15 years on the job, said, "They're telling us that if we even mention the word "strike" to any one, by any method—phone, cell phone, e-mail, whatever—we will be personally fined. We have to stand up to the MTA and Giuliani."

Another worker, who asked that his name not be used, said, "I am an American citizen. We're told that if you open your mouth you can be fired. The union said that they can't even take a strike vote. Man! We can't even talk about a strike!"  
 

Taylor Law and injunctions

The ruling class arrayed all its institutions and weapons against the transit workers—City Hall and the state government, the cops, the board of education, the media, and the courts. Even New Jersey governor Christine Whitman joined in the gang-up against the union. Their aim was to isolate the workers and prevent them from exercising their right to strike.

In two previous contract fights, in 1966 and 1980, transit workers shut down the city's transportation system, which an estimated 3.5 million people use every day. Citing former presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as precedents, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani repeatedly insisted that "government employees have no right to strike." Gov. George Pataki likewise declared that any work stoppage would cause "significant chaos" and would be "illegal."

The stakes in the contract fight are high. Contracts for the more than 300,000 city employees will be negotiated in the months ahead. Giuliani declared December 15 that the proposed 12 percent raise for transit workers, who are state employees, "would be much too high for the city."

Transit workers, like all public employees in New York state, are confronted in their fights for contracts by the antilabor Taylor Law, which makes strikes by public employees illegal and allows the state and city authorities to impose fines and jail sentences on the union and its individual members exercising the basic right to withhold their labor power. This law was enacted in 1967, as a supposedly progressive replacement for an even more draconian 1947 antilabor law that called for firing all government employees who struck. That law proved unenforcable, especially in the 1966 transit strike.

In addition to threatening to invoke the Taylor Law, which includes fining individual workers two days' pay for every day on strike, the city administration and the state attorney general, Democrat Eliot Spitzer, got a State Supreme Court judge to issue a temporary restraining order against the union on behalf of the MTA, as well as an injunction imposing fines and sanctions well beyond the Taylor Law.

The union and each of its members were enjoined from: "in any manner or by any means, directing, calling, causing, authorizing, instigating, conducting, continuing, encouraging, threatening, participating in, assisting in, or approving any work stoppage, sick-out, slowdown, refusal to work as assigned, sabotage, vandalism, picketing with intent to encourage any of these acts, or any other concerted activity intended to or tending to interrupt the normal and regular operations" of the NYC Transit Authority and Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority.

The court order—imposed in the early morning December 14, hours before mass union meetings that many workers expected would take a strike vote—also expressly prohibits the TWU or any section of its members to hold a strike authorization vote on December 14 or "on any other day." The court also directed the union leadership of Local 100 to institute disciplinary proceedings against any member violating the court's orders, and required that the text be mailed overnight to every union member at the local's expense.

The court also granted an injunction requested by the Giuliani administration that called for astronomical financial penalties against the TWU and its members for any violation of the restraining order. The injunction imposed would fine the union $1 million for the first day of a strike, and double the amount each successive day. In addition, fines are to be imposed on any individual member of the union deemed to have violated the court order, starting at $25,000 for first day on strike and doubling each day. This would total more than $3 million per worker for a week-long work stoppage.

Warning of the possibility of "wildcat actions" by workers opposed to the tentative settlement, Giuliani has emphasized that transit workers are still subject to these fines, and could be arrested and jailed, if they even talk about striking as they discuss how to respond to the proposed contract. The city deployed 3,000 extra cops in the subway and bus barns and stations to enforce this.

On December 15 Brooklyn Supreme Court judge Michael Pesce extended this order through December 23.

As part of their antiunion campaign, the mayor's office and Police Chief Howard Safir have also charged that transit workers have engaged in sabotage to further their demands. They asserted, without any evidence, that a misplaced switch December 11 could be the result of "sabotage." And on December 15 they claimed two fake bombs had been placed on the subway tracks and a brakeline had been tampered with.

At the evening meeting of TWU members on December 14, the police presence was extensive, with mounted cops, cops in riot gear, and patrolmen surrounding the building where the meeting was taking place. The following evening, a couple hundred transit workers who rallied to oppose the contract were outnumbered two-to-one by police.  
 

Scare campaign to isolate union

The Giuliani administration, the transit authority, and the big-business press pulled out all the stops in attacking the union and attempting to whip up hysteria against a possible strike. The mayor called the union "immoral" and cautioned city residents that a strike could even cause deaths. Daily papers ran huge displays on the supposed "contingency plan," which include banning cars with less than three occupants in most of Manhattan, placing extra cops at the tunnels and bridges to enforce this, as well as using ferries, commuter trains, and "dollar vans" to try to break a strike. In addition, taxi cabs would be allowed to take multiple fares.

Many workers reacted against this, expressing support for the transit workers' fight for a better contract.

Some of the forces the government counted on to help break a strike made clear they backed the unionists. New York Taxi Workers Alliance issued a statement calling on all drivers to refuse multiple fares, which they characterized as way to "break the transit workers' strike." Their flyer pointed out that taxi drivers have been target of previous attacks by the city administration. At least one group of van drivers who normally provide transportation in Brooklyn decided not to work in Manhattan to help break a transit strike.

The scare campaign by the media and politicians did get a hearing within the middle class and among some workers. One banker told the New York Times he planned to leave town before the strike deadline. "The way the city works, it will probably become the basis for a taxi demonstration," he declared.

The rulers are also playing on divisions in the union officialdom between the grouping around Local 100 president Willie James and a caucus called New Directions, which holds a substantial minority on the executive board and has called for a vote against the proposed contract.

A December 16 editorial in the New York Post captures the tone of this campaign, and how it is used against all transit workers. Accusing New Directions of "attempt[ing] to incite an illegal strike," the editors demand, "Where are the cops when you really need one?"

The press and city officials have tried to reduce the desire by many transit workers to fight for a better contract to an "irresponsible" campaign by a "radical minority."

These assertions were belied by the mobilization of more than 10,000 transit workers and their supporters December 8, who marched to back their demands in the negotiations.

Outside the meetings on December 14, several workers expressed their desire for unity in the face of the broadside attack from the city's and state's rulers. One worker, Wayne, expressed his opinion that prior to the government's attacks on the union, the majority of the union did not necessarily want a strike, but "Giuliani put his foot in it, as he is prone to do." He and other workers Militant reporters spoke to expressed real concern that there was no leadership forthcoming from either James or New Directions on how to respond to the injunction and restraining order.

Many workers expressed concern over the injunctions, and the outrageous character of the fines they would face under the city injunction. Some made clear that they considered these fines of a piece with Giuliani's "get-tough" stance, which has included attacks on other democratic rights in the city, while others thought that it was part of electioneering in his as yet-undeclared campaign for US Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton, who had been in and out of the city campaigning leading up to the contract deadline, has made no public statement on the contract fight or the antilabor injunction.

Olga Rodríguez is a member of the international association of machinists. Al Duncan contributed to this article.  
 

A fight for pay, dignity

Militant reporters asked transit workers outside the December 14 membership meetings what they saw as the key issues confronting the union in the negotiations.

The vast majority said a major wage increase was their most important demand. They explained that while the MTA cries poverty, the transit authority has turned a profit, even publicly debating how to spend the surplus. This surplus was made on the backs of transit workers, who in the last contract took concessions to "save the MTA." Several workers said that now was the time, while the MTA has the money, to get it. They pointed to Giuliani's hypocrisy in claiming that the 27 percent wage raise over three years was excessive and would force a doubling of the transit fare, when the mayor was just awarded at 28 percent raise.

A 12-year conductor pointed to treatment on the job as a key question. "Discipline is outrageous," he said. "There were 16,000 disciplinary actions this year alone. I personally know of eight to ten people terminated. If they feel like going back over your doctor's notes for several years or for however long you have been employed by the MTA, they can, if they want to get you."

Allis, a single parent with a daughter and granddaughter, has worked eight years in transit. She said, "It's like working in the circus and all they want to offer us is peanuts. What we are doing will set a precedent for everyone. We need to stick together. Don't let Giuliani bully us. We want something we can live on. Hey, Giuliani got his." —O.R.  
 
 
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