Please Just Make It Go Away

Now a “dissident group” of TWU board members (on that tidy 46-member executive board — sort of like a 50,000-member Congress) are urging transit workers to reject the new contract:

A handful of executive board members and workers from the city’s transit workers’ union yesterday accused their union president, Roger Toussaint, of making too many concessions in the settlement he signed last week with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Three members of the union’s 46-member executive board – leaders of a dissident faction that has fiercely opposed Mr. Toussaint within Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union – accused him of surrendering any leverage by ending the three-day transit strike on Dec. 22 before reaching a contract settlement. They urged union members to reject the contract that was approved by the union’s executive board last week.

The dissidents, at a news conference in Union Square, claimed that Mr. Toussaint had given in to the authority on major issues, especially an agreement to have workers contribute toward their health insurance premiums. They also complained that Mr. Toussaint had negotiated in private. They added that, in making concessions, he had set back the union to the point where it might have to call another strike.

“With this contract, Roger Toussaint is giving away the store,” said John F. Mooney, vice president for station workers. “It’s a classic bait and switch.” He called the contract “the biggest giveback in transport union history” and led the dozen union dissidents flanking him in a chant: “No secret deals.”

“No secret deals,” eh? They almost sound like the tabloids.