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The MTA says their current offer is their "final offer" to the Transit Workers Union. And what's the offer? Three percent each year over a three year contract; the union wants 8% more. And benefits-wise, the MTA would ask new hires to pay 1% of their pay to go towards their health plans (workers do not do this now). Finally, the MTA wants to increase the retirement age from 55 to 62 after 30 years of service, whereas the TWU wants to lower the age to 50 after 20 years of service, for new hires; the TWU says there would be "two tiers" employees, which they don't want. (Here are some more of the union's demands, which include child care and the MTA's excessive challenges to the TWU's arbitration.)
The MTA's lead negotiator, Gary Dellaverson, says, "There are no talks scheduled because our offer is the best that we're going to come up with," and MTA chairman Peter Kalikow says, "There is no more." You may remember Dellaverson as the super pissed off guy last night, annoyed that TWU leader Roger Toussaint had this 11PM press conference with other labor leaders - Dellaverson had to come down and tamp down the speculation wrought by Toussaint's remarks. Anyway, if this is the MTA's last offer, and the TWU rejected it, what's going on this weekend? Will our favorite metro- and transit-best reporters have to continue camping out at the Grand Hyatt? Are they just pacing in front of the press conference lectern, the way we kept seeing on the WNBC live feed?
City Councilman John Liu, head of the Transportation Committee, blames the MTA for not negotiating a new contract in earnest much earlier. The Village Voice had an interesting take on what the MTA's low offer could mean to the city (less revenue, for one). And some local color stories: Newsday's Ellis Henican finds that Brooklyn Bridge walkers are wary of having more company, the NY Times found subway riders were confused near midnight last evening, and Daily News focuses in on how craiglist is being used to find commuting-during-strike buddies. Plus, Mayor Bloomberg said he was going to study his Spanish at the Office of Emergency Management's office last night, and WNBC's Andrew Siff wrote that many city officials were asking the reporters what was going on. Finally, WCBS 880 has MP3s from Mayor B, Chairman K, and more.
Photograph of MTA Chairman Kalikow, negotiator Dellaverson, and NYC Transit President Lawrence Reuter from Newsday
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I'm so glad to have bought the holiday card. If they strike during the weekend can I get my money back?such a lovely Noel!
I'm so glad to have bought the holiday card. If they strike during the weekend can I get my money back?such a lovely Noel!
screw the union. I would be all for the strike IF the workers were being exploited. However, they arent. After 3 years, they make well over the city median income. Furthermore the city firefighters, police and teachers have a lower salary than MTA employees. Mind you that the cops and firefighters have a much more dangerous job and their pay increases come only after 5 years and not 3. Furthermore, the highest eduaction level that most of these bus and train operators as well as the cleaning crew have are at the high school and GED level. With U.S. and New York experiencing a recession and a high uneployment rate, I can vouch for countless people who are uneployed and much more educated than your average TWU member and would gladly accept any job at a much lower salary. MTA upped their offer to 9% over 3 years, which is quite reasonable. The National average inflation and employee salary increases were at 3% this year. So do the math.
Furthermore, need I mention the little implications. The lost city revenue that would be estimated to be at $1 Billion a day, and the 4 million commuters using cars to get around. Equivalent to MILLIONS of gallons of gas every day and thousands of pound of smog which doesnt help much in these times of gas problems. All I can say is get ready to invade some new middle east countries to offset our problems.
Juan Gonzalez said in this morning's News that Pataki is orchestrating this whole thing and that Kalikow is just doing his bidding.
Oh, great.
Why does everything the Governor touch turn so dumb? The budge, WTC, now the subways...
If the union wanted to strike they'd be on strike right now. Toussaint knows his guys don't want to walk, they want to work. So they throw the time-honored union-busting trick of "we'll take care of the current guys, but screw the guys coming in" so it takes the stakes away from the guys walking the picket line and divides the union.
Bottom line is the MTA is on the road to eliminating many of these jobs. So if he'd agree to do it by attrition, and change his attitude a little bit, there might be a way out of this. And Kalikow, if he didn't have Pataki's hand up his ass, would probably find a way to work this out with Toussant like they did the last time.
A strike would be terrible, both for you and me and my daughter trying to get to school, and for the city and state and all the money lost when both can ill afford it. So if it would be such an act of civil irresponsibility, ask yourselves: why is our beloved governor provoking one?
Pataki's like a dumb George Bush.