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Scripps Howard News Service

December 22, 2005, Thursday 11:01 AM EST

SECTION: DOMESTIC NEWS

HEADLINE: The man chewing on the Big Apple

BYLINE: SHAWN MCCARTHY, Toronto Globe and Mail

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:
Perhaps the most reviled man in New York right now, transit union president Roger Toussaint, is a hard-nosed labor leader of the old school, unlikely to be swayed by the threat of jail and hefty fines.
Trinidadian-born Toussaint, often compared to the union's fiery Irish immigrant founder Michael Quill, says the illegal strike he is leading is about respect for his members and protecting those he calls the "unborn:" future transit workers.
But he has also defined the battle more broadly, long vowing to fight the current trend to roll back benefits for middle-class and working-class Americans.
Toussaint is widely blamed for the pre-Christmas work stoppage that has forced 7 million riders to find other means of travel on the city's frigid streets and has meant a severe economic blow to retailers and restaurants.
On the first day of the strike, he was denounced as "thuggish" by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The New York Daily News, typically somewhat sympathetic to unions, said he had "betrayed his members and the city in an act of madness."
His decision to call a strike was denounced by the international arm of his Transit Workers Union. His Local 100 faces looming bankruptcy as it absorbs a $1-million-a-day fine, and a judge has threatened to jail Toussaint if he doesn't call an end to the strike that is prohibited under state law.
Despite misgivings about the strike among the rank and file, there is little indication he has lost support among the members, who elected him president five years ago on the basis of his defiant attitude toward the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Toussaint, 49, has always been a thorn in the side of the powers that be.
Raised in a one-room house in a family of nine, he was expelled from school in Trinidad for writing political slogans on its walls. He moved to New York, studied at Brooklyn College and was eventually hired by the transit authority, first as a cleaner and later as a track worker.
He immediately turned to union activism, battling what he saw as the authority's repressive working conditions and the union's old-line leadership.
In 1998, he was fired for allegedly doing union business on company time, but sued and won his job back. Two years later, he was elected local president.
Lee Adler, a professor of public-sector labor relations at Cornell University, said Toussaint sees himself as carrying out the mandate of his membership in calling the strike.
"He comes from a tradition of really wanting to be influenced by his rank and file," Adler said. He added that Toussaint's overriding goal in the strike is to avoid a disastrous split in the union between older members with rich benefits, and younger ones who fare much worse.
The MTA's aggressive management style and Toussaint's combative stand have resulted in a toxic mix. He complains that the authority has launched more than 15,000 disciplinary actions against union members, while management criticizes employees' absenteeism and lack of work ethic.
Critics say he forced a strike over relatively small differences and walked away from a contract that most workers would have accepted.
The MTA backtracked on proposals to raise the retirement age to 62 from 55 for new employees and increased its proposal for annual wage increases to 3, 4 and 3.5 percent. But it continued to demand new workers pay 6 percent of their salaries in the first 10 years to help fund their pensions.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)