TT’s Toussaint in the footsteps of great Caribbean leaders

Roger Toussaint is going to jail because he dared to defy the power structure in the US by leading the transport workers of New York in a so-called illegal strike last December. FITUN recognised the importance of Roger Toussaint’s struggle and sent a solidarity letter to him last week. But today I offer the context of this stand for justice.

Roger Toussaint is the President of the Transport Workers’ Union — Local 100 — which represents tens of thousands of bus and subway workers in New York. The union — as many of us know from our friends and relatives who work in that sector — has many Caribbean people amongst its membership. In this regard it is very similar to the Health Care and Human Services Union — Local 1199. It is also interesting that both unions are led by Caribbean born men — Dennis Riviera being the President of 1199.

What has been happening over a period of many decades is that crucial services in the US and other countries of the north are being performed by immigrants from the Caribbean. In the US, and before that in the UK, the public health care and the transport sectors could not function had it not been for Caribbean workers. In the health care sector this situation continues as our nurses and other professionals are being wooed away by offers of higher salaries. The same has also happened in the teaching service and if we remember there have been active and regular programmes to recruit teachers from the Caribbean.

This has meant that largely black and Latino workers from the Caribbean have been filling key positions in the US labour market. At the same time, other Latino workers —mostly from Mexico — have been entering the US and occupy jobs at the lower end of the service sector scale. These workers are often doing jobs that US workers do not wish to engage in. This latter situation has given rise to a fierce debate in the United States about so-called illegal immigrants. This has split the Republican Party and the US Congress.

On the one hand, there are those who wish to round-up and deport all these ‘illegal aliens’ (the US has a way to describe people to make them less than human, collateral damage — a term for persons who have been accidentally killed in warfare — being another!). On the other there are those who advocate an amnesty for these workers since they are contributing in important ways to the economic and social development of the US. Interestingly, President Bush is trying to find a middle ground on this issue, perhaps in the realisation that his Presidency — and hence the Republican Party — is in trouble.

To my mind what has been even more significant is the massive mobilisation that is taking place in defence of the rights of immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of people — from Latin America and the Caribbean — have been demonstrating in US cities over the last month. These demonstrations can be counted amongst the largest ever in US history and this has to be considered a major development since immigrants and especially ‘illegal immigrants’ are often thought of as being passive subjects. Of course a careful study of history — especially the history of the struggle for social justice and against racism, including the civil rights movement in the US — will show that Caribbean-born persons have been in the forefront of the struggle.

We know of course of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Jamaican who led a massive movement in the African Diaspora in the early part of the 20th century and who influenced many movements in the Caribbean including the labour movement of the day — Trinidad Workingmen’s association. Then there was the Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams who organized the very first Pan African Conference in London in 1900! He was followed by two outstanding Trinidadians, George Padmore and CLR James. Padmore led the work of the International Communist movement on the issue of the colonies and racism for a number of years in the 1930’s and after breaking with Moscow, was the prime mover in the anti-colonial struggle, including being the organiser of the most important Pan African Congress held in 1945 in Manchester, England. Attending that Congress were Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta who later led their countries into independence. Padmore was also the chief adviser to Nkrumah.

More recently, in the US we have had Trinidadian Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael) who became one of the most important leaders of first the civil rights and later the black power movement. Malcolm X, though not being Caribbean-born, was the child of a Caribbean-born parent. In the UK, John La Rose, who died just two months ago, played a leading role against racism and social injustice in Britain. Caribbean citizens have therefore been front and centre of the struggle for social justice wherever they have found themselves living and working.

Roger Toussaint is therefore very much in this tradition. He grew up in Trinidad and Tobago in the period of the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s when consciousness was alive to issues of injustice and the need for social transformation. And he has, no doubt, taken this with him to the US and it informs his leadership of Local 100. He is therefore not prepared to tolerate the wrongs against his union members. This was abundantly clear in the statement made by him to the Court on the day of his sentencing. In that statement Toussaint said: “The Authority’s attitude in these negotiations was cavalier and provocative. They had a $1 billion surplus (in the pension plan), and on December 14 — one day before the contract expiration — they got rid of the entire $1 billion surplus in full view of our members. I had previously asked Chairman Kalikow and MTA negotiators not to do this. This in-your-face contempt was bound to inflame our members’ passions. Chairman Kalikow ignored us. I directed our attorneys to seek injunctive action before the courts, but the courts failed to provide an injunction.

“It is the (Transport) Authority that is the chief lawbreaker in the MTA system. The overwhelming sense of the transit workers is that we are being treated with gross unfairness. And there are numerous studies, including the study from Cornell University, that documents this extensively. So our members are fed up with this treatment and it needs to be changed. So when we went on strike, we did so knowing that the law forbids us to strike, but we were engaged in civil disobedience and we did it because we felt we had to. The Taylor Law bars strikes, but it doesn’t give any effective remedy to bar employer misconduct.

The Transit Authority can pursue an unlawful bargaining proposal, such as attempts to impose and illegal pension on us at the last minute — and face no consequences for that. An employer can refuse to engage in any meaningful negotiations after a contract has expired — and face no consequences. And we are determined not to be subjected to that type of cavalier and provocative attitude.”

Toussaint ended his address to the Court by accepting responsibility for the strike but in the tradition of the Court Martial addresses by Raffique Shah and Rex Lasalle in the 1970 mutiny cases (and incidentally Friday was the anniversary of the 1970 State of Emergency) and the even more well-known speech by Fidel Castro, “History will absolve me,” when tried for the armed attack on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953.