His cooperation with the pastoralists' unions played a part in preventing the spread of the 1891 shearers' strike into New South Wales.
Although he would have had a strong chance of winning Young, he persuaded Chris Watson to run for that seat and instead contested Boorowa and was defeated.
Subsequently his influence declined, and the Australian Workers' Union abolished the Young branch in 1896 to cut costs.
Toomey felt abandoned and bitter, and his only subsequent union involvement was as a delegate to the AWU conferences in 1898 and 1899 from Creswick.
Declared bankrupt in 1905, he married Elizabeth Mary Post on 26 December 1906 and became an accountant and paymaster on the northern coalfields.