(The following story by Jere Downs appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on November 4.)
PHILADELPHIA — Transport Workers Union Local 234 president Jean Alexander is once again fighting for her job, as contract negotiations loom between its largest union and financially troubled SEPTA.
Acting for the second time in recent months, the Local 234 executive board voted to indefinitely suspend Alexander without pay Friday, continuing a history of strife at the 5,000-member SEPTA union of bus drivers, cashiers, mechanics and other workers.
In both suspensions, Alexander was accused of failing to follow executive board directives.
“They just hate me,” Alexander said yesterday of nine members of Local 234’s 14-member executive board. “I don’t understand their logic.”
Thomas Casey, Local 234 recording secretary and a member of the executive board that suspended Alexander, said yesterday that the board was trying to assert its policy-making power at the troubled union.
In coming days, the executive board will deliberate on Alexander’s suspension. Under union rules, the board has five days from the date of the suspension to present evidence against Alexander and provide her a formal hearing.
“This could be an ultimatum,” Casey said. “We are trying to say to her that you do have people that you have to answer to.”
Since winning election in July 2002, Alexander’s tenure as the first female leader of one of the city’s largest organized labor forces has been rocky.
Financially strained by mismanagement under former union president Steve Brookens, Local 234 emerged in 2002 from a trusteeship imposed by the New York-based TWU International. As a vice president, Alexander helped lead the union during the trusteeship and has continuously battled with executive board members mostly elected from an opposing slate.
In August, the TWU International reinstated Alexander with back pay after the executive board suspended her in June for allegedly failing to follow board directives.
Yesterday, Alexander and Casey agreed that the most recent dispute included her refusal to sign checks to pay legal costs of executive board court challenges to her leadership. Other matters in dispute remained unclear yesterday.
Amid her troubles, Alexander has won support in federal court, from Philadelphia’s labor community and the headquarters of the TWU. In June, 50 supporters from the National Organization for Women, the NAACP and other female labor leaders picketed the Local 234 union hall to protest her suspension.
In July, executive board members opposed to Alexander’s leadership lost a U.S. District Court appeal in which they petitioned to have a say over the hiring of union staff, lawyers and accountants.
At SEPTA’s headquarters, spokesman Richard Maloney said the agency is still struggling with a $26 million deficit and is girding for tough negotiations with the divided workforce. The contract expires in the spring.
“Given our financial situation, we are concerned that they are going to be able to provide the leadership that union members expect and deserve when it comes time for very difficult negotiations,” Maloney said.