‘80 Strike Wasn’t a Failure

We’ll leave it to others, for now, to debate the relative merits of TWU Local 100 officers Arnold Cherry, Willie James, Steve Downs, and Roger Toussaint. Here, we want to take issue with Richard Steier’s negative assessment of the 1980 transit strike. Mr. Steier asserts that the additional money won by striking—more than 4 percent of wages—was wiped out by the Taylor Law fines. It’s true that transit workers felt the sting of those fines first, and many (unfortunately) chalked the strike up as a defeat. But Mr. Cherry was right then and today, when he notes that the extra raises won by the strike, were permanent additions to transit workers’ paychecks, year after year.

Tooting the Taylor Law fines tune is nothing new. Local 100 President John Lawe had opposed the strike and spent all spring rubbing Taylor Law salt in transit worker’s wounds to secure his reelection. The media badmouthed the strike and were joined by leaders of other municipal unions, who played up its costs as a way of explaining to their members why their 16 percent was better than Local 100’s 20.7 percent. Both were wrong.