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Public Employee Press
Jailed
By GREGORY N. HEIRES
Unions have renewed their call for reforming the Taylor Law, the labor
relations statute that covers most public employees in New York State.
The jailing of Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint April
24 and the $2.5 million penalty imposed upon the TWU for a 60-hour strike
in December underscored how the law is stacked in favor of management.
“The Taylor Law is unbalanced and needs to be changed,” said
DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, who herself was jailed under
the statute for leading a strike in 1968.
“Without the threat of penalties, employers don’t have a strong
incentive to bargain in good faith,” said labor historian Josh Freeman.
Labor expert Stanley Aronowitz, a sociologist and member of the CUNY staff
union’s bargaining committee, said the lack of the strike weapon
weakens labor’s power to force management to bargain seriously. This
imbalance between labor and management permits employers to drag out contract
negotiations for years while workers struggle to keep up with rising consumer
costs, he said.
“The Taylor Law was supposed to establish harmonious labor relations
when it was approved four decades ago,” said Denis Hughes, president
of the New York State AFL-CIO. But in recent years the original goal has
been abandoned by Gov. George E. Pataki’s conservative appointees
to the Public Employment Relations Board, which the law created to mediate
labor disputes.
Hughes said the AFL-CIO is putting together a package of legislative proposals
to reform the law. The proposals would likely call for sanctions on employers
that don’t bargain in good faith, he said. The political climate
wouldn’t permit eliminating the no-strike provision, he said.
In 1967, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller pressed to replace the 1947 Condon-Wadlin
Law, which had such harsh anti-employee penalties that it proved unworkable,
and the compliant Legislature passed the Taylor Law. District Council
37 joined with the TWU and the United Federation of Teachers in a fightback
rally that drew 25,000 union members to Madison Square Garden.
“To hell with them!” cried Jerry Wurf, president of DC 37’s
parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
at the protest. “If we have to strike, we will strike, law or no
law!”
Despite those provocative words, public employee unions have only held
a handful of major strikes since then. What’s more, in the last quarter
century, a major strike hadn’t occurred until the TWU hit the streets
in December.
While not discounting the need for reform, DC 37 General Counsel Eddie
Demmings pointed out that the Taylor Law contains many important provisions
— including the right to bargain collectively and the right to fair
and impartial mediation and arbitration — that public employees lack
in many states. “You don’t want to upset the basic legal structure
governing labor relations,” Demmings said, “but the imbalances
must be addressed.”
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Roberts
remembers her jail time
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For DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, the
jailing of Transport Workers Union President Roger Touissant struck
a personal chord because she also was put behind bars — four
decades ago — for leading a strike of public employees.
In the late 1960s, Roberts spent a year helping DC 37’s parent
union — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees — win bargaining rights for 50,000 public employees
in state mental hospitals.
She was jailed for two weeks in 1968 under the newly enacted Taylor
Law because she ran a roving strike at hospitals in New York City
and upstate in response to Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s refusal
to bargain and allow a representation election. The governor had
unilaterally decided that 124,000 state workers should go into
an employee association that Roberts characterized as a “company
union.” In 1967, the Legislature passed the Taylor Law, which
established union rights for public employees — a crucial
advance — but in exchange continued to ban strikes.
“Here was this new law that gave us the right to form a union
and the governor wasn’t recognizing the right of these workers
to make their own choice,” Roberts said.
During the strike, Roberts delayed her arrest about a week by
playing cat-and-mouse with the police, who had trouble identifying
her because she wore a hood and blended in with predominately
female African-American hospital workers at union rallies and
meetings.
The strike she led helped open the way for fair representation
elections for state employees. Today, the AFSCME-affiliated Civil
Service Employees Association represents 265,000 state workers.
A throng of supporters showed up on Dec. 13, 1968, to support
Roberts as she arrived at Manhattan’s old civil jail —
once a debtors prison, now closed. The supporters included hundreds
of rank-and-file DC 37 activists led by DC 37 Executive Director
Victor Gotbaum and AFSCME President Jerry Wurf.
A few months later, Roberts, Gotbaum and Wurf met with the governor
on union business. “In those days, gentlemen didn’t
feel comfortable about throwing a lady in jail,” said Roberts,
recalling how the patrician governor repeatedly apologized.
Roberts already enjoyed a prominent place in the labor movement
because she had headed the successful organizing drive in which
thousands of city hospital workers voted to join DC 37 in December
1965 — putting DC 37 on the map as the largest city union.
Earlier that year, 19 leaders of Social Service Employees Union
Local 371 were jailed during the month-long Welfare Dept. strike
that won full collective bargaining rights for city employees
— and helped get those rights for public sector workers nationwide.
“When you believe in something, going to jail is a light
price to pay,” said Roberts, who became a symbol of the nationwide
insurgence of public sector unionism then sweeping the country.
— Gregory N. Heires
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