22, 2005 following the signing of an agreement between the TWU Local 100 and the MTA, which dropped its demand for pension changes. The MTA agreed to refund $131.7 million in pension payments to its employees, to a 10.5% wage increase over 3 years and to recognize Martin Luther King day as a paid holiday. The union agreed to move the contract expiration deadline from mid-December to mid-January and a first-time 1.5% employee contribution to health benefits with first-time medical coverage for its pre medicare (pre age 65) retirees. The agreement also established full paid prescription coverage for retirees. At an April 2006 hearing before the NYS Supreme Court Roger Toussaint was issued a 10-day jail sentence, the union was fined $2.5M and its rights to automatic membership dues was ordered forfeited beginning June of 2007. Toussaint turned himself in June 2006 after leading a march over the Brooklyn Bridge to the Manhattan Correctional Center (the “Tombs”) but was released after serving just 3 days. Automatic membership dues were eventually restored in the fall of 2008 after almost 18 months. Transit activism Toussaint’s activism at the MTA / NYCT began with the start of his employment as a car cleaner and continued to the Track Department where he became a union division Chairperson (1995 to 2000). Prior to running for any office, along with a handful of other trackworkers, he started a newsletter called “On Track” which both criticized the NYCT’s treatment of its employees and the union’s representation on their behalf. Toussaint was repeatedly brought up on charges, suspended and eventually terminated by NYCT in 1998. Even though by that time he was the union Chairperson of the Track Division. The termination stemmed from charges that he was in an “unauthorized” vehicle, which was the vehicle of a TWU Local 100 Staff Representative, while performing union business. The vehicle in which he was a passenger, was struck from behind. He was injured and charges were brought. Toussaint was declared terminated after his signed appeal of those charges were turned in one day late by the union, which was in possession of his paperwork. Toussaint sued the NYCT. It was later revealed that the NYCT had paid private investigators to surveil Toussaint while he was out sick/injured. When the extensive surveillance was exposed, including trips to his son's nursery school and union meetings, his firing became a rallying cry for