Results tagged “transitstrike2005”

What a way to (almost) end 2006 - with an arbitrator making a decision about the MTA's transit workers' contract! And the decision is pretty anti-climactic - it's basically the deal that ended the strike last year, though it was later rejected by the Transit Workers Union, then passed but then denied by the MTA. Anyway, arbitrator George Nicolau said the deal was "the most just and reasonable" solution. From the AP:

Both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its foil, Transport Workers Union Local 100, hailed the decision as a triumph -- then needled each other.

Continue reading "Arbitrator Finally Rules on Transit Contract"

) and the piece de resistance, autographed photographs of Toussaint during last December's transit strike ($2).

Animal New York takes issue with Matthew Long, the firefighter hospitalized for almost six months after being injured during the transit strike and finally went home with much fanfare last week. Long was injured while biking to his stationhouse and a private bus (chartered by Bear Stearns for its employees) hit him; he is now suing the Transport Workers Union as well as Bear Stearns, and the van company. Animal New York says Long should be "discussing just how dangerous the streets of NYC are when it comes to cycling" instead, noting that Long admitted he doesn't usually bike in the city. Animal New York has photographs of the road where Long was hit - a stretch of East 52nd Street riddled with potholes. Hmm, maybe Long will have a case against the City of New York and the Department of Transportation as well?

If you're going to protest going to jail after leading an illegal transit strike for three days, then you might as well with the Reverend Al Sharpton, teachers union head Randi Weingarten, and about a thousand other supporters. And according to plan, many members of various unions are starting to view Roger Toussaint as a martyr, versus the main guy who inconvenienced the city (well, it's him and MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow). Toussaint headed off for his ten day jail stand in a big way: Rally outside the Brooklyn courthouse where he was sentenced and a rousing march over the Brooklyn Bridge. Some of what Toussaint told his supporters (and the news crews):

"Jail has no terror for me compared to the shame I would have felt if we would have simply swallowed the authority's miserable prestrike offer!"

Continue reading "Toussaint Goes to Jail After Brooklyn Bridge March"

Interesting fact about the fines imposed on the Transport Workers Union over last December's strike. The TWU can resume collecting membership dues (about $1.5 million per month) if TWU president says the union will never strike again. The thing is that TWU president Roger Toussaint has been pretty adamant about the right to strike, and it'd be unlikely he'd go for it... even though it seems like the union might want some sort of leadership shake-up. And in the "Toussaint's going to jail!" coverage that is so excitable in the tabs, the Daily News looks at what Toussaint can expect in jail. He'll be at "The Tombs" on White Street (aka the Bernard Kerik Complex!) downtown, in a 6" by 8" cell, and breakfast include "cereal, bread and fruit."

Brooklyn Supreme Court's Justice Theodore Jones nailed the transit union with a huge $2.5 million fine yesterday, plus ordered the union to stop collecting dues, and the Transport Workers Union vowed to appeal the decision. The loss for the TWU could be over $7 million all told, since the TWU takes in $1.6 million in dues each month and the union cannot appeal the dues payment stoppage for three months. The TWU will now have to collect fines on the individual basis, and who knows how successul that will be. Naturally, the MTA appreciated the ruling, saying, "In light of the decision by the TWU leadership last December to willfully violate the Taylor Law and disrupt the lives of millions of New Yorkers, we respect the ruling of the court." The Reverend Jesse Jackson, along with the Reverend Al Sharpton, was present for the fines hearing, and complained that the ruling means unions cannot fight back. You can read TWU president Roger Toussaint's court statement, proclaiming that transit workers were engaging in civil disobedience. With the appeal, Gothamist wonders if the fine will be reduced further, as Justice Jones already knocked off half a million - it seems that since the Taylor Law is in place, the TWU has to be punished in some way, like it or not.

The Transport Workers Union is having its members re-vote on the striked-for contract that was ultimately rejected in January, but there are still some TWU members who want workers to reject the contract again. According to the NY Times, the dissidents claim that a revote "undermines the union democracy" but the TWU's stance has been that some workers misunderstood (or were deliberately mislead) about what the contract included. Overall, the TWU has been trying to rally support for a revote that supports the contract because they'd most likely get a bad deal in binding arbitration, and an explanation about the 1.5% sticking point about members now contributing to their medical gets a huge typeface on the TWU website. Of course, the MTA says that the old, rejected contract isn't even on the table anymore, but Gothamist imagines that if the union were to vote yes, the MTA would have to come around in some way, or else be spun as unreasonable by all sides.

It's been three months since the transit strike and still the MTA and Transit Workers Union Local 100 don't have a new contract. So nobody should be too surprised that the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) decided today that the two have to go into binding arbitration where "a three-member panel will essentially dictate the terms of a new contract."

The Transport Workers Union opposes the binding arbitration that the MTA has requested in order to actually hammer out a long overdue contract, so they filied their papers explaining why they oppose and offering their proposals for a contract. One of the chestnuts the TWU pulled out was for raises near the 24% over three years (that the MTA rejected and the TWU executive board later agreed to much lower ones). It seems that binding arbitration usually sticks it to the unions, so it's quite the gamble, but we suppose there wasn't much else the TWU could do, after the union voted down the proposed contract by seven votes. It's our hope that the MTA and TWU work out an agreement- or that the next strike would be some time in the summer, so we can walk amongst smelly garbage wiliting in the heat.

The MTA is seeking binding arbitration for its contract with the Transport Workers Union, making the mess between the TWU's union members and the TWU executive management a Bermuda triangle of rhetoric but not too much action. Okay, we exaggerate, but we should have known it was too good to be true that the MTA and TWU agreed on a contract last month. The TWU's members, who rejected the contract that the executive management agreed to, says it won't strike again. Gothamist thinks the failure of the contract means the end of Roger Toussaint as the TWU President - he spent tons of money to get the contract passed and that failed miserably. The TWU doesn't want binding arbitration, so we'll see how fast their internal talks go.

Today's transit contract vote dealine was at noon. And from the AP:

The workers, by a seven-vote margin out of more than 22,000 votes cast, opted to reject Transport Workers Union local president Roger Toussaint's call for ratification and follow the lead of a dissident group urging rejection. The voting ended at noon Friday.

Besides getting the actual new contract approved by the union members, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint admitted to a group that the union was battered from the strike. At a Wall Street Project breakfast, he said:

"We paid the price in millions of dollars in fines, 10 times that for our members, and face impending loss of dues check off which is going to hemorrhage the finances of our union. But you cannot take on a fight like this and not get bloodied. We are still here standing before you bloodied but unbowed."

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow is offering a not-really-but-sorta mea culpa about wanting the transit union to put their pensions on the line during contract negotiations. As you may remember, pensions were the reason why transit workers went ahead with a 60 hour transit strike (new workers would have to contribute more to their pension funds), and it was when Kalikow took the pension out of the contract that the MTA and Transport Workers Union started talking. In various, Kalikow says he misjudged how passionate transit workers would be about their pensions, but doesn't completely apologize for the third ring of hell he helped create, noting that even big companies like GM are being undone by employee pensions. Plus, he says he's still not sure if he's going to recommend that the MTA's executive board ratify the contract. The TWU's members need to approve the contract as well - or else it's back to strapping on the mukluks and trudging to work!

The MTA forced transit beat reporters to a very special New Year's Day press conference to explain that, yes, their settlement with the transit workers union was good. With reports of a pension refund to union members that would total somewhere around $100 million (give for take tens of millions here and there - the reports totally conflict on that point) and an "extremely upset" Governor Pataki (props to the NY Post for supplying this great "extremely upset" picture him) over that refund, the MTA sought to explain that the deal was not "bought." The MTA's lead negotiator, Garry Dellaverson said that he felt the governor knew about the agreement, saying, "Do I believe he was fully briefed on the costs associated with the collective-bargaining agreement? I believe the answer to that to be yes. Was he engaged in the process? I believe the answer to that to be yes." Hmm, maybe the governor was too busy planning his next trips to New Hampshire and Iowa to read the briefing about the strike settlement! But Pataki also implied he would consider asking MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow to resign. Dunh dunh dunh! Given that Pataki will be out after this year (huzzah!), we wonder who will be next in line to lead the MTA.

The Transport Workers Union executive board agreed to a new contract with the MTA. The raises are 3%, 4%, and 3.5% raises over three years that the MTA had offered a week ago; the new thing is that workers will be paying 1.5% of their salaries towards health care. While the vote was 37-4 (plus one absention), one dissenter told the Post, "We're paying 4.5 percent for medical [benefits] over the course of the contract. That means we're only getting a 6 percent increase in pay." But there was no inclusion of the MTA's pension demand that essentially broke the TWU's back and made them strike. Now, the members of the union need to vote on the contract, but Newsday points out that there are some other issues are yet to be detailed, such as "cost of fines for the strike and other factors such as work rules, deployment and other possible improvements for the workers." Well, Gothamist is glad the strike is over. We can't believe it's been a week since the middle of the strike, but that's what a lot of eggnog and latkes can do you to.

On the first day of the transit strike, we asked you if you crushed on any local news reporters while watching non-stop coverage. And according to our highly unscientific straw poll, NY1's Bobby Cuza takes the top honors. Which makes sense, since he seemed to be on the air every possible moment! Gothamist really did love scrappy NY1's one-two-three punch of Cuza at the Grand Hyatt (where the negotiations were usually taking place)Rebecca Spitz in the studio, and Dean Meminger at TWU headquarters, as we would debate whether or not to go to bed or keep watching to see if something new would happen. (For the record, the big announcements happened at 3AM - when the strike was announced - and midday - when the transit workers returned to work.) Not that Gothamist necessarily wants some crazy emergency to see these kids in round-the-clock action again, but they were awesome.

Famous British blogger Felix Salmon rented a Zipcar on Thursday and spent seven hours giving people free rides around town. That's so nice! Good work, Felix! A small slice of his adventure:

With the strike over and New Yorkers and out-of-towners in New York more mobile, we hear that stores are having some crazy sales today and tomrorow, in order to make up for strike days. Stores had to open later and close early, if they were able to open at all. The city projects a loss of $1 billion in revenue; according to Bloomberg (the news site, not the mayor, but on that topic, it's weird when Bloomberg LLP reports on Bloomberg the Mayor), losses included "$10 million a day because of overtime costs and $12 million in daily sales tax revenue." So, you may have tripped to shop during the strike - are you checking out great post-strike deals?

We didn't spot any buses or trains when we were out last night, but rumor has it they started running sometime after midnight? If you snapped some pictures of your commute into work, we'd love to see them-- tag them "subway" or "bus" on Flickr, or send them to photos(at)gothamist.com. These were taken by Satmandu last night and Tien this morning.

After hearing that the transit strike was possibly nearing an end, there reports now that state mediators have a framework in place to end the strike by the Transit Workers Union, Local 100 against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the TWU executive board has approved it. All it took was an all night meeting with a moderator and the two sides finally ironed out enough differences. While details of the agreement have not been finalized yet, subways and busses are expected to start running before they are. When that might happen right now is still unknown, but we've been reading that it could take 12-24 10-18 hours.

The strike mediator Richard Curreri is on television right now, saying that the parties have come back to the table and the union is commiting to do what it needs to do to end the strike. The TWU is taking it to the executive board; looks like they are thinking about going back to work.

No, no, we're not striking from eating pizza. That would just be plain silly. But Adam over at Slice has moblogged his walk to work today and photographed every pizza place he passed. From the looks of the picture here, it seems like he's been walking on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. It seems like he's reached work with no slices consumed. For shame, Adam, for shame.

With Satan's Laundromat on permanent hiatus, it's left to us to gather the most amusing signs of the 2005 Transit Strike. So far, we've found these four, which are all moderately amusing-- all from the Transit Strike stream on Flickr. We'll be walking around downtown later on today, so hopefully we'll spot some more signs then. If you've got any good sign pictures, let us know!

A bunch of people have written in to ask if the Roosevelt Island Tram is running. The answer is yes-- it is not operated by the MTA (it's run by JWP and overseen by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.) Some tram info:

Yesterday WWD had a story on how the transit strike is effecting our fashions. Leave it to them to declare the comeback of Uggs in a "major way". Though the Chicago Sun Times will declare it's the "Reeboks-and-gym-socks-with-your-business-suit" look that have come back in to style. We're they ever in style? And if so, what the hell does the Chicago Sun Times know about what we're wearing during the transit strike.