Who

Toussaint is president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, the union of NYC Transit employees. New Yorkers know him as the guy who convinced union members to go on strike for three freezing days just before Christmas in 2005.

Backstory

When Roger Toussaint was 17, he was arrested and expelled from a Trinidadian high school for painting the slogan "Free Education Means Free Books" on the walls of school buildings. It did little to dampen his militancy. He moved to New York and joined student protests in the 1970s, then landed a job as a subway car cleaner and joined the traditionally radical Transport Workers Union 100 in the 1980s. In the '90s, Toussaint was fired by the MTA for union activity. He filed a grievance, and during hearings it emerged that the authority had hired a detective to trail him, filming the activist's moves. The surveillance story turned Toussaint into a martyr, and union members demanded he be rehired. Transit workers elected him to the union's top spot in 2000.

Of note

The last several years have seen the most poisonous labor relations at the MTA in decades. Toussaint became a lighting rod for criticism during the 2005 strike, and did a 10-day stint in jail because of it (the union was also fined $2.5 million). The TWU spent the next year in a bizarre series of twists and turns that ended with a new contract and Toussaint reelected in late 2006. Toussaint and Bloomberg have had a contentious relationship on par with Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner—the mayor called Toussaint and fellow union strikers "thuggish" and "selfish"; Toussaint fired back that transit workers had been "pushed around and underappreciated" by the MTA. Toussaint is dealing with a new regime at the MTA, now that Peter Kalikow—his longtime nemesis—is out as MTA chief, replaced by the tag team of Lee Sander and Dale Hemmerdinger. The good news: The relationship between Toussaint and the Sander-Hemmerdinger regime is already more cordial and productive than Toussaint and Kalikow's association ever was.

Personal

Toussaint lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Donna, and their five children.