December 14, 2000
By NICHOLE M. CHRISTIAN
After helping the city's subway and bus workers win a new contract last year, following a showdown with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Willie James was ousted as the president of the 35,000-member Transport Workers Union in a fractious election last night.
Roger Toussaint, 44, a leader of the union's upstart New Directions faction, won 12,465 or 60.5 percent of the votes counted last night, while a union vice president, Eddie Melendez, came in second with 4,347 votes.
Mr. Melendez, 44, had been described as a successor to Mr. James, 64, who had not planned to run for re- election. But the election was thrown into turmoil when the union president changed his mind and re-entered the race. Last night, Mr. James came in third, winning just 3,786 votes.
The union's change of power comes at what seemed a moment of prosperity, one created mostly by Mr. James, a former bus driver and the first African-American to lead the union.
Last December, he negotiated a contract that included a 12 percent pay increase over three years and also gave most of the union's members a 3.3 percent effective increase in pay by reducing their annual pension contributions.
The New Directions group had pressed union members to strike over the contract, until Mayor Giuliani obtained an injunction that threatened the union and its members with millions of dollars in fines.
But for Mr. James, the damage was done. The New Directions group convincingly painted him as a puppet of management, unwilling to battle for workers. They argued that he should have fought for a 15 percent wage increase, and they blamed him for allowing 500 nonunion welfare recipients to be put to work cleaning subways in exchange for a no-layoff clause for union members.
Mr. James and his spokesman, Jim Grossman, did not return calls for comment last night. Neither did Mr. Melendez and his representatives.
Much of Mr. Toussaint's support came from workers in the subways, but Mr. Toussaint also won by a 2-to- 1 margin among bus drivers, who had long been a stronghold of Mr. James.
Many of the union members who turned out to watch last night's vote tally said the change of power was long overdue. "He created the perception that we got a fat contract," Marc Albritton, a subway mechanic, said about Mr. James. "But he gave away more than he got. With this election we're a union that won't just roll over." He said members want a union that answers their phone calls and helps with their problems.
As Mr. Toussaint watched the counting, he vowed that under his leadership the union would do more than just issue threats and complaints.
"The public has to be mindful that a lot of what has been said about us has just been Mr. Giuliani getting on his bully pulpit trying to turn us into an enemy," he said. "We actually want to return the union to its roots of being a strong public advocate."
Mr. Toussaint said that union leaders would adopt strong stands against unnecessary fare increases and repeated service reductions and interruptions. "We have to be as accountable to the public as we are to members."