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Okay, it's been about three-plus fruitless days since the MTA and Transit Workers Union contract expired and they deadlocked during new negotiations. Two other private city buslines in Queens went on strike (even though they are run by the MTA, they haven't officially been taken over, therefore those workers are not subject to the Taylor Law and the crippling fines the city has threatened), and now the TWU's president Roger Toussaint is warning that the rest of the system's workers on subways and buses will strike tonight if an agreement is not made. Yes! We get to stay up really late to see whether or not a workday will be striking - awesome! The union is trying to have the state labor board to step in by requiring the MTA to stop offering reduced pensions for future employees, but the MTA said that move was a publicity stunt.
Yesterday, Toussaint told the Daily News that the limited strike was to "upthe ante": "The preference would be to systematically escalate the challenge, to always retain the ability to up the ante, maximize the impact on the MTA, minimize the impact on my members." Okay, the ante is upped, but will the MTA raise their offer? While the agency says that their last offer of 3% for each year over a 3-year contract - with future hires retiring later and contributing 1% of their paychecks to medical - is their last offer, though they might be willing to tweak it. Gothamist is doubtful the MTA will make the kind of "substantial movement" that the union wants.
The NY Times had an interesting analysis of how the MTA is trying to give the union what it wants by making it agree that its future employees will have concessions. It turns out that transit workers do face a lot of abuse from riders. Plus, wondering whether the TWU is stuck in a time warp, how strike fear is getting in the way of shopping, and Mayor Bloomberg agrees that we're a city in limbo.
Photograph from Reuters
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Roger Toussaint and the rest of the Quill Crime Family are engaging in extortion. If they strike Mr. Toussaint and his capos should be sent to Rikers and left there. Being sent to jail did wonders for Mike Quill in 1966 and we never heard from him again after that.
so, union square anyone? street party?
Kevin,
good luck finding a place to stand, let alone have a party in Union Square.
unless by "street party" he means "rioting and ripping down the stupid holiday mall thing" in which case i'm so in...
the MTAs offer still seems pretty sweet from my vantage point. the twu is doing nothing but extorting the mta and the city and basically us. i wish there was someway for the city to break this union.
First you re-elect a billionaire Republican, now you’re anti-union? What happened to liberal NYC?
First you re-elect a billionaire Republican, now you’re anti-union? What happened to liberal NYC?
Posted by: sigh | December 19, 2005 02:38 PM
Please stay out of our politics if you have no clue what you are taliking about. Bloomberg may have run as a republican but is far from one.
Look, I know the election has passed and I'm trying to get over it. But I think it's you who doesn't know what you're talking about. Without starting a big thing -- how far from being a republican can you be if you veto a bill that would increase access to EC and if you are the single largest donor to the RNC?
I was just lamenting that we New Yorkers seem to be letting go of our liberal ideals. It's too bad, that's all.
You can be liberal, and even pro-labor, and still think that what the TWU is pulling is BS. I didn't realize that part of being liberal was throwing your support in for everything defined as liberal, without thinking about it. It'll be low-wage and blue collar workers in the outer boros who get hurt the most by a strike. How's that for labor solidarity?
Has anyone done a poll to see where the tide of public opinion is? I think it was decidedly pro-union until people started hearing things about fat raises and no-contribution pension demands that far exceed what the average worker, blue or white collar, receives. I woulnd't be shocked to see the TWU loosing public opinion, esp. if they go through with a strike.
And there is a way to bust this union: let them strike, then fire the lot of them. It worked with air traffic control, and it doesn't even take that long to recover from it.
"how far from being a republican can you be if you veto a bill that would increase access to EC"
I'm banging my head on the table trying to think of what "EC" stands for...?
And yes, that should be "losing." It's damn cold in here right now, and accurate typing is a casualty.
I highly doubt more than a quarter of workers in blue-collar industries out in the further reaches of the city are without cars. Or, if not, without a friend at work who has a car. People don't move to Bayside or Eastchester without cars.
The MTA made a mistake by proposing that the 2% charge for health care only apply to new workers instead of all workers. Now the TWU can't back down without losing face. Maybe the MTA is trying to force a strike so they can fire people.
i hope they strike.... why do they have problems with disciplinary actions against them, that seems to be the biggest thing, and as a rider I've seen cases in which i wish there was some disciplinary action against these workers. let them strike, after losing 2 days pay for each day out, it will end soon and in the riding publics favor.
A bit of labor history: First, Mike Quill and the TWU won the 1966 strike. He survived jail just fine, thank you. Second, in the 1980's, unionized workers were told that they were paid too much, that they didn't pay enough for health care, that their pensions were too sweet, that they didn't work hard enough and if they wanted to preserve some, but not all, of those benefits, newer workers would have to form a new "tier" (or two, or four) with even lower pay or benefits. 20 years later, private industry is gutted, jobs that used to support middle class lifestyles (meatpacking, for instance) now pay minimum wage, we still have 45 million people without health insurance and retirees ae losing their health plans and pensions. The attacks on the TWU, as imperfect as their leadership is, are straight out of the playbook of the 80's, including the PATCO firings, which the American working class has never really recovered from. Whether they say so or not, whether you believe it or not, their fight is our fight. Billionaires Bloomberg and Kallikow can go to Hell! Victory to the Transit Workers!
Correction for Charles. Quill did not "survive jail just fine." He died of a heart attack a month after the strike.
The MTA, the agency which is claiming that they don't have enough money to maintain workers wages (the "raises" they offered would basically keep up with inflation from what i read), has been caught with double books, has totally opaque processes for deciding what happens and where with OUR money, doesn't give a damn about subway workers or riders, and generally represents the same class of people as Bloomberg and Pataki. If you're not concerned about quasigovernmental organizations that are unaccountable to the public but only to the bondholders that are lending them money and their political supporters, go read the powerbroker--it will explain why new york has dumbass highways with low overpasses that don't allow buses on them, why it didn't spend any money on public transportation for 30 years, and why it was illegal for many years for authorities to issue bonds.
In addition, has anyone noticed what's happened to this city for the past few years? I would bet that there a lot of people like me who are supporting the TWU not just because labor rights are important, but because we DO need to resist:
a billionaire technocrat mayor (republican or democrat at heart, he serves finance/corporate new york) and a governor who is 1) incompetent 2) a political opportunist who will curry favor with whomever he needs to (i didn't hear anyone complaining about the sweet deal that seiu 1199 got to throw the election to pataki) 3) in charge of appointing the head of the MTA and 4) incompetent (yes, it needs to be listed twice).
And all this is not about two people, but part of a larger process of gentrification, of money going to the rich instead of the poor, of working people getting the shaft, of people without health care, etc.
So will the TWU strike solve all of that or even more than a little? No. But i'd rather side with people fighting this and build something with them than break the only union in the city that seems to give a damn.
And I thank you for the correction, David.