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While the Transit Workers Union and MTA still hash out contract negotiation, the City Comptroller revealed the city could lose $1.6 billion in the first week of a strike, due to lost revenue from holiday shopping and events - not to mention the regular work. The MTA offered a 27 month contract: A 3% raise for the first 15 months, then 2% for the next 12. But the TWU is still holding out for 8% for each of three years, so the MTA is looking to see if the courts can uphold the Taylor Law, which would requires transit workers to keep working.
The TWU says there is still a 50-50 chance of a strike, but there's "still time" to work things out. (The best TV news editing of a strike story was on WNBC, where they showed Mayor Bloomberg saying he wanted transit workers to take a compromised deal, cutting to TWU's Roger Touissant saying, "That's why the Mayor is not involved and shouldn't be!" ) The Mayor continues to implore people to stay with friends and relatives who are closer to work, as the city revealed more strike contingency plans. For instance, no cars with less than four people would be allowed to enter the city below 96th Street between 5AM and 11AM and schools would open two hours later. But there's no telling how businesses will keep going if their workers aren't there.
The NY Times profiles a subway conductor today, and the money issues are elucidated with his actual income and expenses. And a NYC Transit survey says that subway service is getting slower - and that the 1 train has the most delays! No kidding - we saw four express 2/3 trains pass before a 1 train wandered into a midtown station at 7:30PM last night. But most of the delays were caused by more track fires, water delays, and suspicious packages.
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If any public employees deserve 8% raises its the NYPD and FDNY. Driving a subway train is not that hard in comparison to what those people do.
Another question:
What is the MTA going to do with the useless "Holdiay Bonus" if there is a strike?
Perhaps that $50 million would have been better spent to shut the TWU up.
Toby beat me to it. I sure am glad I'm saving a few bucks on my retarded holiday MetroCard when I can't use it because of a transit strike. The MTA really should have used that $50 million to improve its system, deal with its workers, something other than wasting it away. Bad business there.
Jealous of the blue collar crowd because someone outsmarts you on the education:salary ratio? What's stopping your educated self from take the MTA exams and scoring a supposedly cush MTA job?
Also, a grand a month to feed and cloth a family for three or more? I don't know what city you can live in and get by on that, unless you are salvation army and food pantry bound. Hardly generous of you.
Precisely the point, Toby. But then again, we wouldn't get the tourists on the trains, now, would we?
'Course, if things keep going the way they are going, no one will be on the trains.
As far as to how great the conductors, etc., have things, bear in mind that in the last couple of negotiations, its the TWU asking for things (let's face it, that's what unions do in negotiations) but then the TA is asking for things *back*. Now some are reasonable, to curb excesses, and some are not. Again, nature of negotiations. But the TA has always, for each negotiation in the last 10-15 years, gone in and said, Okay, guys, this is what we are going to take away. And if you don't like it, walk. But wait, you can't, because your ability to strike has been outlawed. So much for bargaining in good faith.
I guarantee you, that if they get to negotiation points that they can't agree on, and there is a stirke, it won't be the 8% raises (which is a ploy anyway). It will be on givebacks on either health care or pension or something else which will cut that grand a month or so down quite a bit.
Having said all that, no trains would be a royal P.I.T.A. But let's not drop this 100% on the union's doorstep.
People seem to vent their anger at the door operators, floor sweepers and token booth workers, which is understandable.
But think about the many other types of MTA employees that truly are the heart of the system. Think about the supervisors that control the extremely complex and archaic traffic control and switching systems, the technicians that risk life-and-limb to clear up track problems, and the workers that make repairs and do maintenance on the system.
Read about what goes on behind the scenes.
It's a lot more skilled work than most people realize, especially when you consider that the subway lines have extremely outdated interlocking systems. It's all based on a high degree of skill, and it's amazing how much supervisors do with such old technology. These guys should get a raise for their rare skills.
Think it's easy? Try this simulator and see if you can make hundreds of trains show up on time during rush hour.
Why is the argument against the TWU's demands always "Hey, you should see how shitty OTHER workers get treated!" That's not an argument. I'm sorry if you're a journalist or a teacher with a BA and you're making less - the solution is for journalists, teachers, etc. to agitate for more money, not to begrudge the people who provide a crucial service to this city a just-above-living wage and job security.
dude, toby and ben - please write a letter to the nytimes in hopes that one gets printed or posted on their site in response to their article. good points.
Samantha, read the Times editorial. Just-above-living wage? They pay nothing for healthcare and even the lowest-level cleaners, on average, make as much as a first year teacher. And have you seen sparkling clean stations lately? (Okay, perhaps there's no abundance of sparkling clean students, either). Sure, lower-paid workers should agitate (like the teacher's union did earlier this year, hello?) But they certainly don't deserve much more that the MTA is offering, and nowhere near the 8% per year increase for the next three years they initially proposed. I'd like a 24% raise, too, but, like, give me a break.
$22.54 an hour for this? And they want 8% increases year over year? That means he'd make $28.39 an hour by the end of 2008. For making announcements, turning keys, opening the doors?!? I know computer programmers, people who have to solve complex problems, who don't make that much.
"Control supervisor," fine, some people are more important than others in the system and deserve higher pay. That's the same in any company. The difference is most companies give pay raises on merit. There's no strike threat and no need to give everybody a raise just to properly compensate the essential employees. As I wrote before, go ahead and walk away as an individual if you feel you're underpaid. If your replacement sucks at the job, we'll be screaming at the MTA and they'll run after you with wallet in hand to get you back. But give me a break with this "everybody is going to walk off the job simultaneously and we'll shut down the system" BS. That's extortion by any measure. Where the hell is Eliot Spitzer and the RICO statutes when you need them?
Well, I'm clearly bourgeois. I don't think $47K in NYC for a family of four is sitting pretty - not even close. Whether somebody has a spouse who works has nothing to do with it. I read the Times editorial and the interview with the TWU member and I'm still not convinced that these people are getting some kind of windfall.
The computer programmers you mentioned are subject to the whims of the market and of the mercurial companies they work for. They have zero leverage. That's why people unionize.
Wage earners have been taking on the chin since 1969. I for one hope that the Transport Workers have the force to finally start the fight back. Most wage earners do not live in their inlaw's two family houses.
Labor is the source of all wealth.
Wage earners have been taking on the chin since 1969. I for one hope that the Transport Workers have the force to finally start the fight back. Most wage earners do not live in their inlaw's two family houses.
Labor is the source of all wealth.
I think what everyone going back and forth here fails to realize is that the MTA is a quasi government entity. As such all of poor shmos who work in the private sector have every right to complain. We are subject to market forces that are far more demanding anything a government worker faces. They have security and perks we will never have. We have every right to b***h about MTA employees who complain about the sweet deal they are getting.
The New York subway system is one of the few in the world that runs 24 hours every day. Also, most other cities around the world charge much more for their subway rides.
We, the subway riders, are getting the sweet deal. Fucking spoiled brats.
groceries for a family of four at 400/month?
that is the most crack-smokingest thing i've read here yet.
It seems that many of you forgot that only a couple years ago, the MTA was caught with its pants down--they fudged the books and hid a several-hundred-million-dollar surplus. And this was right after the last strike threat. So direct your anger to the MTA, as they're the ones blowing their current surplus on stupid holiday discounts for tourist fun passes instead of paying their employees.
Yeah, unions are great. Tell me that again when you start having to cough up $120 for a 30-day Metrocard. BTW, so this "poor working stiff" key-turner in the article spends $4000/year to send his kids to Catholic school, eh? I suppose the public schools aren't good enough for his kids.
can't we hate on both the mta and the workers' union?
why must it be one or the other? throw albany in there as well.
I'm with dhex on this one.
Did anyone read Clyde Haberman's column about the need for a "riders' advocate" in the NYT today? I don't have Times Select (of course) but they mentioned it on NY1 this morning. Just wondering if he was making sense.
While I think the 8%/yr and moving the retirement age to 50 that the union wants are insane ideas, I think they have a good point about terribly inadequate emergency training for conductors and train operators.
Sad thing is, Brightliner, we'll be payin' that before too long, and it will have nothing to do with the union, but a lot to MTA's mismanagement (we need higher fares, we've got a surplus, we need higher fares... round and round we go).
You know, it occurred to me, if the subways were a private operation, or a corporation - not government-owned - the whole thing would be a lot more honest. There'd be no Taylor Law, the workers would be paid market rate for their skills, both sides would be forced to bargain in good faith, politicians would stay out of it... stop, I must stop...
If the subway were a private corporation, it would be one funded with public money (at least partially), and that doesn't always work out so great.
See also: Amtrak
How about if the subway were to become worker-owned, hmmmm...? Wonder what that would be like.
Totally agree, dude... hence the must... stop...
It's a testament to how fubared this all is that something like private ownership is looking good (at least to someone like me)by comparison.
problem being, how do you introduce competition into a literally closed system? this isn't like the taxi laws - which are inherently anti-competition and unfair - in that you can always add more cars, but adding tracks or lines or whathaveyou is basically impossible at this point. and i certainly don't see anyone yanking the public teat away from the MTA anytime soon.
now, if we really want to clusterfuck things up, let's make the MTA board solely out of electable positions.
MTA's ineptitude the real issue
Juan Gonzalez - NY Daily News
With the deadline approaching for a possible transit strike, MTA officials are going their way once again.
The way of lies, smoke screens and funny money math.
This is an agency, after all, that earlier this year predicted a 2005 surplus of only $75 million. The figure kept mushrooming and now stands at $1 billion.
Talk about miscalculation.
But no matter. Whether flat broke or flush with cash, Metropolitan Transportation Authority brass have one refrain for their workers: We can't afford it.
The same MTA accountants who gave us this year's numbers are predicting with complete certainty huge deficits in 2007 and beyond.
Worker pensions are a big stumbling point in the current talks. Transit workers who have 25 years of service are eligible to retire starting at age 55, as are many city workers.
"The growth in our pensions costs is unsustainable," Gary Dellaverson, head of MTA labor relations, said over the weekend.
Dellaverson warned that it "would make these negotiations very difficult indeed" if Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint rejects the MTA's proposal to create a new, less generous pension plan for new workers, with retirement at age 62 after 30 years of service.
But here's what Dellaverson didn't tell you: The pension problems he cites have very little to do with the vast majority of city transit workers.
The biggest pension problem the MTA faces is at the Long Island Rail Road, not here in the city. That's because a few years ago the agency and state lawmakers agreed to sweeten pensions for LIRR workers. It didn't hurt that the unions on that line have always been close to Long Island's Republican Party establishment.
Those sweeteners, plus a slipshod pension tracking system that recently triggered an MTA inspector general's investigation, created a $1.2 billion deficit in the LIRR pension fund.
Meanwhile, a pension problem that MTA management ignored for more than 40 years has now turned into another $1billion headache.
Back in the 1960s, buses in Manhattan and the Bronx were operated by the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transportation Authority (MABSTOA). When the MTA absorbed the bankrupt MABSTOA, it refused to place those drivers into the regular municipal retirement system with the majority of their fellow city transit workers, and it never funded MABSTOA's pension liabilities.
Those liabilities are now estimated at more than $950 million. A few months ago, the MTA suddenly proposed to spend $450 million of this year's surplus to partially fund the plan.
As for the transit workers who devoted their careers to working in the city, the MTA's contributions to the regular municipal retirement system are dramatically lower than they were in the 1980s and 1990s.
The agency is trying to get city transit workers to pay for its own disastrous mistakes from years past.
All of this pension business is more of a smoke screen for the major cause of the MTA's financial problems.
Both state Controller Alan Hevesi and several independent watchdog groups have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the MTA's ballooning debt service.
During the Pataki years, the state and city drastically decreased their subsidies to mass transit while permitting the MTA to go on a borrowing binge to pay for capital projects.
"The increased debt service bomb is now going off," said James Parrott of the nonprofit Fiscal Policy Institute.
Next year, 17% of the entire MTA budget will go toward debt service, and that will grow to 21% by 2009.
Dellaverson and the brass scream about pension costs as "unsustainable," but no one says a word about runaway debt service to banks and bondholders.
When it comes to money, Dellaverson says, transit workers should act responsibly and accept tough times. In other words, they shouldn't follow the MTA way.
For transit workers, tired of all these years of management deception, it's enough to provoke a strike that no one really wants.
dhex, you're right. The subway is a monopoly and necessarily so. Even when they were separate systems (BMT, IND, IRT), they didn't really compete with each other. But there's another component of the MTA. It wouldn't be all that difficult to open the bus system to competition. Of course, both the MTA and the TWU would scream bloody murder if City Hall even considered that.
Employee ownership wouldn't help with a monopoly. Microsoft employees have all sorts of stock options, but that doesn't keep them from putting out bug-ridden bloatware like Windows and Office. Merit pay is the only way to ensure accountability from employees, but that's exactly what the TWU refuses to allow. They want across the board raises for every employee, good or bad, essential or menial.
"They want across the board raises for every employee, good or bad, essential or menial."
Let me tell you something. For the most part, every Transit worker does their job PROPERLY. If not, there'd be a LOT of dead bodies underground. BELIEVE IT!
Essential or menial? What in the heck does THAT mean? Do you mean to say that someone who maybe cleans a station or a train is unimportant? If the riding public would clean up after their nasty selves, then they wouldn't need cleaners. But the bulk of the riding public are PIGS. You ever sit down at your set on the train and look down and see a glob of phlegm? A transit worker didn't do that. A passenger did. Ever come across some chicken bones or a half-empty cup of coffee? A transit worker didn't do that. A passenger did. Newspapers strewn all over the place? A transit worker didn't do that. A passenger did. So if passengers do this, do we really expect them to clean it up? HA! No a "menial" transit worker will clean it up. And if the MTA would come off some of the money, there would be more money to hire more cleaners to clean up after the nasty passengers!
"What the heck does that mean?" It means some jobs are more important than others. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if all the motormen walked off the job for even a day, the system would experience major disruptions. Meanwhile, if the cleaners you hold in such high regard were to walk out, the consequences would be noticeable but hardly critical, at least for a few days.
The way you defend transit workers and come down on passengers, I get the feeling you're a worker and possibly a cleaner who's lusting after his 8% per year raise.
"Let me tell you something. For the most part, every Transit worker does their job PROPERLY. If not, there'd be a LOT of dead bodies underground. BELIEVE IT!"
That's very funny! Considering we always read news stories about sleeping token booth clerks, transit cops who can't be bothered to give any directions, huge holes punched in tunnel ceilings which workers somehow don't notice for months, etc. Besides, nobody is arguing whether they do their jobs properly. What's in dispute is just how much pay those jobs are worth. Sorry, but most people in other fields are not sympathetic when these jobs pay more and have better benefits than theirs but demand less work.
If I WERE a cleaner, you're damn right I'd be lusting after a 8% raise. heck, they couldn't pay me enough to clkean up after nasty mofo's like you probably are.
I'm a conductor, and for all the times that I've been threatened, swung at, spit at, spit on, pissed on (yes...PISSED ON), cursed out, degraded, slurred racially, etc...because someone had a bad day, or missed their train or whatever. Nah, they don't pay me enough to take someone else's abuse.
I get it on both ends. From management and the riding public. And for sure, I don't want what I already have to be taken away. And if that means that people have to suffer for a few days, then let the chips fall where they may.
To be honest, NONE OF YOU can have any argument or discussion with me about what transit workers deserve or what they don't deserve. You don't work for NYC Transit, so you don't know. You'll never know until you do. When I train new conductors, I always ask them if they had any misconceptions about this job when they were a passenger that have since cleared up when they got the job. They ALWAYS say that they didn't realize that the job was much harder than it looked.
As a conductor, I am responsible for EVERYONE riding on my train, whether it be one person, one hundred, or one thousand. I'm responsible for how they get on and how they get off. That's a responsibility that the police don't even have. We are the first responders if someone gets sick, or if there's a fight on the train, or any situation that can arise that might endanger a passenger. And God forbid there be a nuclear, chemical or biological attack in the subway. You'll have to follow me while I wear my gas mask that only lasts for 15 minutes. That's not even to mention the stuff we usually breathe in for 8 hours a day minimum. A wonderful combination of steel dust and general pollutants that coats our lungs and gets into our pores. No wonder more of us are dying of cancer. We retire, then soon afterwards...we die. Usually of cancer.
You will never understand what we, as transit workers go through on a daily basis. Personally, I don't really care either. You already have your minds made up about us. So be it.
But I'll say this...when the next filings for conductor come up, I CHALLENGE any one of you to take the test. If you get called, come on down and work for NYC Transit. Experience what we experience. I GUARANTEE YOU, your tone will change. Test the test. Get the job. Come on down. You'll see.
Who cares about the stupid little test they make you take? 50K for someone without even a college diploma is EXTREMELY GENEROUS. You should be thankful for what you are getting from us taxpayers.
Have you ever seen what modern technology can do? Other major cities in the world (Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, HongKong, Tapei...) have subway systems WITHOUT DRIVERS OR CONDUCTORS. No accidents, 100% safe, no union thugs such as you to deal with.
Yeah, go on strike. Do what you want. It is just a matter of time before your job disappears anyway.
Who cares about the stupid little test they make you take? 50K for someone without even a college diploma is EXTREMELY GENEROUS. You should be thankful for what you are getting from us taxpayers.
Have you ever seen what modern technology can do? Other major cities in the world (Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, HongKong, Tapei...) have subway systems WITHOUT DRIVERS OR CONDUCTORS. No accidents, 100% safe, no union thugs such as you to deal with.
Yeah, go on strike. Do what you want. It is just a matter of time before your job disappears anyway.
The MTA should spend its money on automation. Let's see what these generously paid union worker will do in the real world. Demanding 8% in a weaken economy while everyone suffers. Most people for that matter don't even get raises that high. Pushing a button to open doors, sweeping floors, sitting in a token booth doesn't require any qualitative / quantitative skills. Should be happy that they even pay you this much without a college degree. Before they bitch and moan look at all the other people are doing and see how much better you are in.
The only people getting rich would be the TWU executives through high union dues. The MTA should plan contigency next time and follow the lead of Northwest Airlines, hire retired / backup workers and let them strike. Let the Taylor Law works its magic and fine them every single day for their stupidity.
Eventually the MTA system will declare bankruptcy dues to these stupid unions. Look at the airlines and automobile industry. The union already crippled even the public company. Now starts the lay off and restructuring. For the upcoming future, I hope the MTA invest heavily in IT and lets have everything automated. For now the MTA is the only monopoly in NYC.
Hahahaha.
One thing you guys don't understands is that MYC Transit can NEVER be fully automated. Even with the computer based trains they want to put on the L line, they need a motorman in the cab. The stations were never designed for automated trains. And to adapt them for automation would shut down sections of the system to a great amount of time and send construction costs so sky high your fare would be $5.
Face facts, they will NEVER get rid of the transit worker. To think that our jobs are going anywhere in the next FIFTY years much less the next five-to-ten years...well it's just a pipe dream.
Honestly, I think all of you who argue about layoffs, automation and whatever...are just plain stupid.
>
Just so you know...
Retired transit workers are STILL union members. They're not going to cross the picket line. We're fighting for them as well. And like I said, you can't train a new hire fast enough to take our place. Pipe dreams. Keep dreaming. One day, you might come up with something that may actually work.
As the deadline for a citywide strike approaches it appears that the sticking points are the pensions and health benefits.
Toussaint and the Board are under tremendous pressure to fight any erosion of pensions or health benefits. The MTA may have to concede to the TWU's stance for these contract negotiations to avoid a strike but the MTA's position is correct when they state that the pension and health benefit systems do not account for the evolving reality of the growing burden they impose on the MTA. The pension system was originally set up when the average life expectancy of retirees was signficantly lower. Having beneficiaries draw from the pension funds anywhere from years to decades longer than originally anticipated along with soaring health insurance costs will cause the programs to implode if the plans are not adjusted to deal with market and medical realities. The TWU may well get their way regarding pensions and health benefits for this contract but they have to face the inevitable reality that unless they are willing to make concessions on these in the very near future they will be hurting their "unborn." Having a sufficiently funded pension plan, even where benefits do not kick in for another 7 years will be better than having no pension fund at all if and when there is a pension fund default. Just look at what United's employees have to contend with now.