Opposition wins in TWU Local 100

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An insurgent slate won control of Transport Workers Union Local 100, the 37,000-member union of New York City subway and bus workers. John Samuelsen, heading the opposition Take Back Our Union slate, was elected president, defeating Curtis Tate, the incumbent. TBOU took all four of the top citywide officers, four of the seven vice presidencies, and a majority of the incoming executive board.

Tate, an interim acting president running for a first elected full term, had been supported by Roger Toussaint, the incumbent president, who had taken a kind of leave of absence after being appointed to an international union post. (If that sentence is puzzling, it is because this whole election was a bit crazy.) Toussaint was not running, but Tate was his man.

Toussaint himself had been elected president as an insurgent on the New Directions caucus slate back in 2000 on a program of militancy and democracy, and his regime began with great promise. But in the years that followed he managed to antagonize union activists and secondary leaders on all sides, beginning with his old colleagues at New Directions and continuing with colleagues who came to his side later. He promptly revealed an intolerant authoritarian personality that would not only brook no outright criticism but would not even allow for lukewarm support! One of those earlier zealous Toussaint supporters was John Samuelsen; when he expressed overt misgivings over the sale of the union-owned building, Toussaint excommunicated him and proceeded to undercut his reputation in the union. Samuelsen fought back, in the end defeating Toussaint's candidate for Local 100 president.

In the pre-election period, Toussaint tried to engineer the process to what he obviously felt was to his advantage. Thousands of long-standing members were ineligible to vote because they had fallen behind in dues when the local lost dues checkoff rights after a recent subway strike. He put over a bylaw change to require the casting of votes in June, but the actual count to take place six months later in December.

Meanwhile, although those thousands of old members were not allowed to vote, hundreds of new members, who joined after the election campaign and after the June voting deadline, were permitted to vote. In the interim, during a period of dues uncertainty over who was or was not in good standing, Toussaint used the confusion to declare opposition candidates for various subdivision posts ineligible to run. He acted to undermine elected officers of local subdivisions, who supported his critics, by withdrawing their release time, the time permitted away from their jobs to take care of union business.

In the end, it failed. The voters swept his administration away. New York transit workers are an independent-minded bunch, with a long tradition of insurgency. They resent being kicked around by the Transit Authority and they don't like to be kicked around in their own union.