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NEW YORK, NY December 04, 2006 —It was almost a year ago that Roger Toussaint led the city’s 34,000 transit workers in a 3-day bus and subway strike. Today, members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 are still without a contract. And Toussaint is in a fiercely-contested and often nasty battle to hold on to his job as union President. WNYC’s Beth Fertig has more.

REPORTER: At the East New York Bus Depot, union representative Stephan Thomas works in a crowded office filled with pamphlets about workers rights and health insurance. Lately, Thomas has been collecting fliers that are showing up around the depot. One of them has color pictures of himself and Union President Roger Toussaint.

REPORTER: What’s this?

THOMAS: Calling Roger and myself rats, that we fire people or attempt to fire people. You name it, every day there’s something against us.

REPORTER: Thomas is running for vice president of the union’s bus division on the same ticket as Toussaint. That’s made him an easy target for the opposition. He says he’s never seen such a negative election in his 21 years as a bus driver. He says union members should appreciate Toussaint’s achievements during his six years as president.

THOMAS: Lifetime medical is always something that has always bothered us, he was able to get it in the last contract, unfortunately the knuckleheads voted down the contract.

REPORTER: The Transport Workers Union is at an historic moment. This is an activist union that was founded in the 1930s, and whose slogan is “no contract, no work.” But the strike cost the union millions of dollars in fines. And members rejected Toussaint’s contract deal by only seven votes. An arbitrator is expected to come up with a new contract by the end of this month – just as the union is scheduled to vote on a new president.

TOUSSAINT: It took determination and vision to stay the course and not just accept a bare bones contract and to make the contract happen.

REPORTER: In the break room of the East New York Bus Depot, about 25 bus drivers listen respectfully as Toussaint defends his leadership. A couple of others play chess by the window, ignoring him.

Toussaint says the contract dispute opened deep fault lines in the union. Those who voted against it didn’t want to pay 1 point 5 percent of their earnings on healthcare. But Toussaint thought it was a fair trade for preserving the pension system, getting maternity leave and a paid Martin Luther King Day holiday.

TOUSSAINT: I am on a mission to change the culture in our union. That includes negotiating contracts that restructure the benefits portion of our package compared to the wages. Union leaders like to train members just to look at the wages. And they rob from Peter to pay Paul in terms of take money from the benefits to fund wages to get past the moment.

REPORTER: But Toussaint’s opponents claim it’s his leadership that’s the problem. They accuse him of firing dozens of union staffers to preserve his fiefdom, and keeping their representatives out of negotiations. In fact, Toussaint recently told the Daily News that he kept his own executive board in the dark when he made a deal with the MTA during the strike.

ROBERTS: I mean it’s either his way or the highway.

REPORTER: Barry Roberts is a Vice President from the union’s bus division, who’s now running for president. He’s considered the leading opposition candidate based on the number of signatures he collected. Roberts says the union could have had a contract by now if Toussaint listened to his members.

ROBERTS: Just because Toussaint feels that his radical ways of doing business is what this membership needs is not true. I could look at many other different unions in this city and see how they operate and how they run. And they get good contracts, they get good work done. Sanitation, corrections, look at Randi Weingarten lately with her contract for teachers. It’s not about always going out there beating people upside the head and yelling at them saying shut up. It’s about sitting down and negotiating, talking, doing good business and negotiating.

REPORTER: Roberts accuses the Toussaint camp of dirty politics. He’s got his own collection of negative fliers, including one suggesting that his running mate, a track worker named John Samuelson, was mysteriously forced out of his old job at the department of corrections

SAMUELSON: It seems that the Toussaint campaign is engaging in anonymous personal attacks instead of putting forth policies on how to advance this union.

REPORTER: In the break room of the subway station on 34th Street and 8th Avenue, Samuelson tells workers it’s time for the union to come together.

SAMUELSON: Over the last 3 years Local 100 has become a bloodbath of infighting.

REPORTER: If elected, Samuelson said he and Roberts will push for extra money for nightshift workers and a universal transit pass.

After the meeting, the workers walked out to the subway platforms through a beeping emergency gate. They were clearly nervous about being seen talking to a reporter while working. They didn’t want to say much about the election.

WOMAN: Well you was in there right? Then you heard it.

REPORTER: What do you think?

WOMAN: I think it’s time for a new president.

REPORTER: Toussaint has acknowledged he could have done a better job explaining the contract to his members. He says his opponents in this election are the same people who urged members to vote no on the contract – making THEM responsible for the current mess. But Samuelson calls that argument a failure of leadership.

SAMUELSON: Transit workers aren’t stupid as Roger would like people to believe. Transit workers aren’t easily misled. Transit workers rightly identified the contract as having provisions which are unacceptable to us, namely the 1.5 percent contribution. Which is a gross financial giveback.

REPORTER: But being angry about the contract and choosing a new president are two different things.

On the platform of the Lexington Avenue Line at 42nd Street, conductor Gerard Egan says it’s time to get rid of Toussaint.

EGAN: In the last contract he didn’t do us any good.

REPORTER: But Egan says he’ll probably vote for one of the 3 other opponents he knows, instead of Toussaint’s main challenger, Barry Roberts. A divided vote will certainly help Toussaint. So will fatigue. Conductor John Bellamy says he’ll reluctantly vote for Toussaint only because he doesn’t trust the others.

BELLAMY: Like sometimes when you picking a Nathan’s hotdog over a Papaya hotdog you’re like this one tastes better but they’re both hot dogs, you know what I mean? (Laughs)

REPORTER: Union members have until December 15th to mail in their ballots. Whoever wins the presidency will be responsible for healing a union that is deeply divided, and for setting a new course in labor relations. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.