January 1, 2006

ROGER TOUSSAINT

EVERYBODY’S PERSON OF THE YEAR

During the 29-year existence of EVERYBODY’S, we have on numerous occasions announced our PERSON OF THE YEAR. In the 1980s, we actually threw gala dinners in honor of the Person of the Year as we did for, the late Sir Arthur Lewis of St. Lucia, in 1980, when he won the 1979 Nobel Prize for economics, or the late Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica, when she became the first woman to head a government in the Anglophone Caribbean.

In recent years we have only announced our person of the year.

Our 2004 person of the year went to Prime Minister Patrick of Manning of Trinidad & Tobago for his leadership and generosity in helping Caribbean neighbors after hurricanes, such as Ivan, devastated several islands.

This year, EVERYBODY’S PERSON OF THE YEAR is ROGER TOUSSAINT, President of Local 100, the union that represents the transit workers of New York City.

Like thousands of other Caribbean immigrants, Trinidad & Tobago-born Toussaint, came to the U.S. to get an education and remained to make a contribution.

Roger Toussaint is reminiscent of the late Peter Ottley, an immigrant from Grenada, who made an impact on the labor movement in New York City and across the U.S. Beginning in 1933 and ending in the 1980s, Ottley organized nursing home and hospital workers, elevator operators and hotel workers into unions. For the thousands of immigrants of today who keep New York City functioning – nurses’ aides, hotel and building janitors and cleaning women – they owe a debt of gratitude to Ottley, then president of Local 144, for the relatively decent working conditions that they now enjoy in comparison to their earlier counterparts.

Like Ottley, Roger Toussaint is a man of principle who aggressively embraced the American credo of bequeathing a better future for tomorrow’s worker. By waging an honorable battle to maintain workers hard-won pension and other benefits Toussaint and the Transport Workers Union demonstrated that they are keeping alive the best traditions of the American labor movement.

Once the strike was called, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and New York State Governor George Pataki waged a war of words against Toussaint. The mayor even used racial code words to refer the workers’ glorious struggle as “thuggish behavior,” while reminding Toussaint that “This is a nation of laws.”

Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki conveniently forgot to remind New Yorkers and the nation that it was the “thug” Toussaint who, in 2002, in the wake of 9/11, accepted a modest contract for his union much to the chagrin of many union members who accused Toussaint of “selling out.”

Toussaint took the high road then. It would have been unprincipled, unpatriotic and not within the spirit of sacrifice for Toussaint and the TWU to call a strike when the city was still reeling from the attack.

Toussaint was right in 2002 for not calling a strike and he was right in 2005 when he called one.

We applaud Roger Toussaint for, the dignified way he conducted himself during the 54-hour strike, his principled approach, his oratory and his effective communication of the transit workers demands. Moreover, we salute Mr. Toussaint and the selfless, valiant workers of the Transport Workers Union for standing up for the unborn and today’s workers by “resisting pension givebacks and the erosion or elimination workers’ health-benefit coverage.” Indeed, our person of the year is charting a course that we hope labor leaders throughout the nation will emulate.

Editor’s Note:
EVERYBODY’S Nov/Dec 2003 issue has a lengthy interview with Toussaint with an ironic title, “The Fire Next Time!” by Judy E. Forbin. The entire interview and issue can be obtained via pdf download for $3.00 at www.everybodysmag.com. We do not have any more hard copies of the Nov/Dec 2003 issue but we will mail a copy of the article for $2.50. Request it via everybodys@msn.com.