Former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern says we should be concerned about this pension payout:

The great Toussaint victory came over an issue not previously mentioned in the press. When the Legislature reduced the retirement age for transit workers to 55, it required the beneficiaries of early retirement to contribute 3% of their salaries toward the new higher pensions. Years later, under pressure from the union, it reduced the contribution to 2%, and later abolished it entirely. However, Albany refused union demands to refund the percentage of their salaries that transit workers had paid in for their higher pensions. It is unusual for Albany to resist a union demand, normally the legislators are supine in the face of pressure from their regular contributors; in fact some consider it unethical to turn down a request from those at whose table they have supped.

Nonetheless, it was the MTA that agreed to the massive payout, as a condition of settling the illegal strike. And it was done in secret, behind closed doors, with the press excluded. The reason to bar the press is to prevent pandering by the participants, not to allow last-minute deals unknown to anyone but the parties. This is an extraordinary violation of the principle of open government. It is three men in a closed room, dispensing hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. [Conservatives are pissed.]

And never mind selling out the “unborn” — the TWU now has 13,700 workers not eligible for the pension contribution refund who are getting screwed over here. (Are they the toddlers here? The adolescents?)

The current city tabloid cause célèbre — the TWU pension buyback, which union leadership cites as making the strike worth it — may be vetoed by the Governor, provided he has the balls to do so:

Gov. George E. Pataki’s office said last night that he was inclined to veto a key provision of the New York City transit contract settlement announced this week — one that gives 20,000 workers refunds of pension contributions — noting that he had vetoed a similar provision twice before.

The provision, which would require a change in state law, would give many workers refunds of payments they made to their pension plan between 1994 and 2001, when most workers contributed 5.3 percent of their earnings. In 2001, the contribution for most workers was reduced to 2 percent.

The provision, part of the settlement reached on Tuesday by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, delighted many transit workers, particularly those who joined the system in 1994 or earlier. It is expected to strengthen support for the contract among the union’s 33,700 members, who will vote on the deal by next month.

. . .

Aides said the governor was surprised and disappointed by the inclusion of the provision in the settlement.

The refund provision has drawn scrutiny on editorial pages. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal argued that the authority “caved on pension reform”; The Daily News asserted that the union and its president, Roger Toussaint, “made out like bandits”; and The New York Post argued that the cost of the refunds was “far too high” and the provision “difficult to fathom.”

Mr. Pataki, a Republican, appointed the chairman of the authority, Peter S. Kalikow, and has considerable influence over it. Even so, it would be unusual for the governor to block a bill that the authority and its largest union had agreed to support.

Union leadership has, in the Post’s words, “gloated” that the buyback would more than pay for fines levied against individual workers. But that still doesn’t help 13,700 workers who didn’t contribute at the higher rate . . .

There’s no mistaking the Post’s take on the new transit worker contract — “TWU’s Greedy Gloating”:

The Transport Workers Union was gloating yesterday that its damaging, illegal three-day strike resulted in a better contract for 34,000 subway and bus workers.

“Was the strike worth it? Yes,” read a large headline over a letter to union members from TWU head Roger Toussaint’s office.

“It’s about respect, and it’s about results.”

The letter continued, “We came back with more than was on the table before the strike . . . The 2005 transit strike was a big success. We went out strong. We came back stronger.”

Toussaint was particularly giddy about a hefty pension rebate that will be given to more than half the 34,000 members who made alleged “overpayments” toward their retirement from 1994 to 2000.

“We said we need pension justice. We got it,” Toussaint said on a Web site statement. He added that the refund will mean $8,000 to $14,000 for some 20,000 members.

Marvin Holland, a TWU executive board member who represents station agents, crowed, “The pension refund will be 10 times more than any fines we will get from the strike.”

By tomorrow night, a Brooklyn man will have visited 1,000 bars this year:

Raise a glass to Dan Freeman.

The 61-year-old Brooklyn barhopper is set tonight to mark the end of a quest to down at least one drink in 1,000 pubs in 2005.

Freeman’s boozy odyssey — which has led him to watering holes in three states, four countries and five boroughs — will wind down on the Bowery with a glass of champagne at bar No. 1,000, the Pioneer.

“It seems somehow appropriate to finish up on the Bowery,” said Freeman, who retired from his own consulting firm. “I’m sure that’s where many people thought I’d finish up anyway.”

His project is of course chronicled on a blog, 1000 Bars.

The Daily News is keeping the fire of righteous indignation burning by pointing out that the MTA’s offer to buy back pension contributions in the new contract will amount to a huge windfall for some transit employees:

Thousands of bus and subway workers are poised to reap up to $14,000 each in a new contract pension windfall that will ease the pain of their strike penalties — but will cost commuters an estimated $110 million.

News of the surprise Metropolitan Transportation Authority payout to up to 20,000 union members follows last week’s crippling three-day strike, which cost the city an estimated $1 billion and wreaked pre-holiday chaos.

The $110 million represents a refund of extra pension contributions that up to 20,000 union members made between 1994 and 2000. The new transit contract will give workers back the 2.3% of wages they paid toward pensions for those six years — plus interest.

“It’ll probably balance out, but it’s actually our money,” said bus driver Alfred Kwiatkowski, 50, of the lower East Side.

The MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint wouldn’t comment yesterday, but some workers said the deal made last week’s strike worthwhile.

“Roger finally got us our money back,” crowed bus driver Ray Rios, 48, of Corona, Queens, a 17-year veteran who has clamored for a refund since 2000. “We’ve been wanting our money back ever since.”

Thousands of MTA workers like Rios paid 2.3% extra into the pension fund for six years so they could retire at 55 instead of 62. But when the Legislature lowered the retirement age for all MTA workers to 55 in 2000, their extra contributions were for naught.

Gov. Pataki twice vetoed bills that would have returned the money to workers like Rios, saying it was a matter for the bargaining table. So that’s what the MTA did — agreeing to the one-time payment.

And just so everyone knows, the Daily News editorial board is pissed about this:

Roger Toussaint and the Transport Workers Union made out like bandits after all by crippling New York in their lawless strike. Those many promises by top officials that a walkout would gain the workers nothing have gone up in a $110 million puff of smoke.

. . .

The surprise pension sweetener has a history that dates to 1994. That year, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo signed legislation letting transit workers retire after 25 years, rather than 30, if they contributed an extra 2.3% of their salary to the pension system. Many did. Then, in 2000, the Legislature and Gov. Pataki enacted a bill that permitted all transit workers to pack it in after 25 years at age 55.

The union argued that everyone who had been paying for the benefit should get their money back. Pataki and the Legislature rejected the request, as well they should have. The TWU tried twice more to get Albany to approve reimbursing the workers and was unsuccessful both times. Now, after devastating New York, it has won.

(A payback doesn’t actually seem like such an unfair thing, but it’s obviously important for the Daily News to keep piling on . . .)

The rat — that sweet inflatable rat you see in front of union wrath-incurring job sites — may not be around much longer after the National Labor Relations Board ruling that deemed it confrontational and beyond the pale of normal free speech:

The inflatable rubber rat, bucktoothed bane of strikebreakers and emblem of union wrath, may be headed for retirement. The National Labor Relations Board is now considering a case that could make it harder to employ one on a picket line.

At issue in the case is whether the rat is the equivalent of picketing, which can be restricted under federal law, or a form of free speech, which enjoys far fewer limitations. The case, which was filed three years ago, is slowly percolating through the system, but the labor board is poised to make a ruling. If it decides the rat is, indeed, a form of picketing, it could have a chilling effect on its use.

“It’s going to inhibit the rat,” said Alvin Blyer, the director of the Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island region of the board. The board’s national office will eventually rule on the case.

For those unfamiliar with the rat, consider this description provided in a ruling by Steven Davis, an administrative law judge for the board who heard the case in his Brooklyn court in March:

“The rat presents an imposing figure,” the ruling says. “The rats here were 15 or 30 feet high. The body of the rat is gray with pink eyes, ears and nose. Its sits on its haunches with its front paws outstretched and claws extended. Its mouth is open, baring its teeth.”

. . .

In his 30-page opinion, Judge Davis ruled against the rat.

“The union’s use of the rat,” he wrote, “constituted confrontational conduct intended to persuade third persons not to do business with Concrete [Structures Inc., which filed complaint against the Laborers' Eastern Region Organizing Fund, the body that puts out the rat].”

He continued: “A rat is a well-known symbol of a labor dispute and is a signal to third persons that there is an invisible picket line they should not cross.”

The union has appealed the judge’s ruling, and its lawyer, Lowell Peterson, said he was confident the rat would survive, even if the labor board decides against it.

“Ultimately, I think the rat will be vindicated, if you will,” he said. “Their theory that there’s something magical about the rat is wrong. There’s nothing magical about a rat — it’s just ugly.”

If the rat was banned, the union’s lawyer promised to use a skunk instead.

The rat in question:

The MTA and the Transport Workers Union reached a settlement on a new 37-month contract, striking a deal that — for current transit employees — is in fact worse than what was first offered by the MTA:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the transit workers’ union announced a settlement yesterday in which the authority abandoned its demand for concessions on pensions and the union agreed to have all workers pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.

Last night the executive board of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, voted 37 to 4 to approve the tentative 37-month contract. One member abstained. The city’s 33,700 subway and bus workers are expected to vote on the agreement early next month; some are expected to oppose it out of unhappiness over having to pay toward health premiums for the first time.

The agreement calls for transit workers to pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward the premiums, cutting into the raises they receive. That comes on top of the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most transit workers face for participating in last week’s illegal transit strike.

The new contract includes raises of 3 percent in the first year, 4 percent in the second year and 3.5 percent in the third year . . . in other words, exactly what the MTA offered to the union just before it went out on strike.

And instead of pension contributions for future employees, now all transit workers will contribute money towards their health care premimum. So going out on strike not only cost the average transit worker $1000 but now they will have to pay for health care as well. Smart, smart move.

Transport Workers Union board members were ecstatic:

“These were huge items for our membership,” said Marvin W. Holland, a station cleaner and board member who voted to approve the contract. “If it took a strike to get it, so be it. I think this is an overwhelming success.”

Meanwhile, in an impressive display of moving goalposts, TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint apparently decided that all he had to do was outdo Philadelphia transit workers’ recent contract:

One union leader close to the talks said Mr. Toussaint was eager to be able to show his union’s members that he delivered a better contract than the one received by 5,000 Philadelphia transit workers after their one-week strike last month.

The Philadelphia workers received raises of 3 percent a year for three years and their union agreed, for the first time, to have workers pay 1 percent of their wages toward their health premiums.

Mr. Toussaint agreed to higher premiums but he can say he obtained bigger raises than the Philadelphia union received.

It’s admirable to “refuse to sell out the unborn” — the recent police contract that lowered rookie pay to around $25,000 was an egregious example of a union selling out its “unborn” — but I find it very difficult to believe that current transit employees will be happy about actually getting a worse deal by upholding that noble principle. They should vote down the contract. And I would totally understand why.

The Daily News reports that the MTA and Transport Workers Union are close to signing a new contract, one that seems worse than what the transit workers would have gotten had they not gone on strike:

Sources said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Transport Workers Union Local 100 are close to a three-year pact that calls for raises of 3%, 4% and 4% for its 33,700 workers.

The framework of the deal would require all workers to contribute toward health insurance, but would not change the existing pension plan or retirement age, sources said.

While health care costs would rise, retirees would see improved health coverage, sources said.

The local’s executive board has been told to report to its headquarters on West End Ave. today. It must approve any potential pact and call a ratification vote by members.

That framework, if nailed down, allows both sides to address some of their main concerns.

Union leader Roger Toussaint can say he held the line on pensions; he was vehemently opposed to raising the retirement age from 55 to 62, and fought raising pension contributions for new hires.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow can point to the workers’ first-ever contribution to health premiums. Transit officials have said pension and health care costs are soaring, and that without workers paying for some of their costs, fares could rise.

By fighting off a pension contribution for new hires in exchange for higher contributions to health care premiums for current employees, the transit workers seem very principled, almost altruistic . . .

I’m not buying it.

A “confused” Upper East Side woman who was unsure what to do with a dead body seems to have wanted to ship her dead husband’s body to Arizona via parcel post. The smell led police to her apartment:

The smell of death led cops yesterday to a ritzy upper East Side building, where a confused 67-year-old woman told them she stuffed her husband’s corpse in a suitcase to ship him to Arizona, police sources said.

“He always wanted to go to Arizona,” Carole Fallon told cops who arrived at her cluttered 11th-floor apartment in the Plaza Tower on E. 60th St., where she lives with her 97-year-old mother, the sources said.

When asked about a foul odor, the women pointed to a suitcase packed with the rotting body of 87-year-old James Fallon, who died about two weeks ago, sources said.

Fallon, who suffered from a heart condition and high blood pressure, used a cane to get around and was in ailing health in recent months, neighbors said.

“I think they were confused,” said William Fallon of Arizona, whose father married his stepmother 30 years ago. “It’s not the way I pictured my father.”

Police believe Fallon, a retired Los Angeles land developer, died of natural causes and the women panicked, cops said.

Carole Fallon and her mom, who both suffer from medical conditions, didn’t appear to believe they did anything wrong, law enforcement sources said.

“They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know who to call,” a police source told the Daily News. “They figured they could call the post office and they could come and pick it up.”

. . .

Fallon and her mother, who don’t have any relatives in the immediate area, were taken to Bellevue Hospital to be looked after, sources said.

Cops hauled two pricey Louis Vuitton bags out of the 34-story building but it was not immediately clear if they had been used in the bizarre body storage.

The Plaza Tower was once home to famed Broadway performer Ethel Merman.

This is just to say: I am an impatient, overly aggressive and just plain bad bicyclist, and the best thing about the transit strike ending is that I am off the road.

So in a sort of holiday spirit, I would like to take the opportunity to apologize to several pedestrians whom I scolded or cursed at. (NB: This in no way releases you from what at the time were obvious, inexcusable transgressions — it’s just to admit that my response was perhaps excessive.) Please note the following:

• To the middle-aged woman in the black overcoat at 60th Street and Park Avenue on the morning of December 21, 2005 at whom I yelled “Lady, get out of the way!” — I’m sorry, I really should have just slowed down and allowed you to cross against the light; and being stressed out that morning still does not excuse me from sneering “Hey, Lady” at you.
• To the middle-aged gentleman at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue on the evening of December 21, 2005 — “Get the fuck out of the way!” was perhaps an overly aggressive way to express what I really felt, which was something more along the lines of, “Please take care not to walk directly in front of a long line of bicyclists trying to cross the street, particularly when you are walking against the light.”
• To the group of three pedestrians at 60th Street and Park Avenue on the morning of December 22, 2005 at whom I yelled, “Get out of the way!” — while actually speeding up — I apologize; even though (again) you were crossing the street against the light, in speeding up to almost hit you I was perhaps acting too aggressively.
• Finally, to the near-elderly woman in the black fur coat at 59th Street and Third Avenue on the evening of December 22, 2005 who was crossing against the light — the one at whom I yelled “Lady, get out of the way” and who snapped something indecipherable at me — I am sorry for making the extra effort to turn around while I was almost through the intersection and yelling “fuck you”; yelling “fuck you” is probably never justified, especially when I wasn’t exactly sure what you said, and especially because yelling obscenities at the elderly is rude, unseemly behavior.

That said, I am emphatically unapologetic about flipping off the idiot in the blue minivan who drove right in front of me at 45th Avenue and 23rd Street in Queens. In fact, I would have yelled, too, were it not for the fact that he could not hear me. To you, Sir — Watch out for bicyclists, you stupid moron.

Sometimes you can forgive the “hostile media” an opportunity to tweak things a little. A dry, wry report in the Times about how buses and subways restarted, for example:

Across the city last night, thousands of engines rumbled and roared to life. Compressors sputtered and pumped air pressure into brakes. The triumphant, suffocating scent of diesel fuel filled the bus yards. Darkened train platforms were suddenly bathed in wan light, sending rats scurrying. Doors opened and shut, opened and shut. Public-address speakers were tested to see if they had maintained their crystalline fidelity during 60 hours of imposed silence.

If in the end transit workers somehow get a worse deal than when they started, what exactly was the point? Now it emerges:

“In 21 years as a transit worker, this has probably been one of the best days of my life,” said Dennis H. Boyd, a train operator and member of the union’s executive board, who voted to end the strike. “The membership wanted to make a statement, they wanted to go to battle with the M.T.A., and we fulfilled that.”

Oh, so it wasn’t about refusing to sell out the “unborn” after all! In the end, it was about . . . respect. Some members of the rank-and-file were even more explicit:

Frank, a six-year vet who also works in a substation, says the strike had to happen because too many strike threats have gone nowhere in the past; the TWU needed to slap the city to remind folks that they’ve got some juice.

Oh, not to worry, all you all made your point. We certainly respect the fact that you can fuck over all of us in the respectful way you did. Sorry for ever doubting that you had it bad.

Indeed, everyone respects the financial and psychological damage you can incur:

The financial hammerlock of the three-day transit strike may have cost New York a whopping $1 billion, the city controller’s office said yesterday. Waiters missed out on the gravy train of holiday tips, retailers slashed prices in deserted stores and office workers lost productivity to the elaborate planning of normally uneventful commutes.

Everyone from mighty national chains to mom-and-pop stores to the transit workers themselves felt the pain.

“This strike killed the little guy,” said Mark Isreal, who owns the Doughnut Plant on the lower East Side. “I lost half my wholesale business — about $1,200 a day — because my driver was stuck in traffic.”

Isreal said the Dean & DeLuca cafe at Rockefeller Center turned away a big Doughnut Plant delivery because it was two hours late and had missed the breakfast rush.

. . .

Anastasia Donde, 22, a waitress at SoHo’s Cub Room, complained that she had made only $15 in tips Tuesday night. “Normally, I would make $100,” she said. “Christmas is an important time for my business. This is bad.”

. . .

As for the striking transit workers, the walkout cost them about $400 a day in lost wages and fines. Spread across 33,700 strikers and three days, that’s more than $40 million.

As transit employees returned to work — without a contract — it’s unclear what was gained by the strike:

We’re back on track — but, oh, what a train wreck this transit strike has been to the city. Three days of sore feet from slogging around town while the subways and buses sat idle, three days of a $1 billion gut-punch to the local economy - and New York doesn’t even have a contract with transit workers to show for all the agony.

. . .

As officials calculated New York lost $1 billion in business during the strike, Mayor Bloomberg called the ordeal “a very big test for our city.”

“And I think it’s safe to say we passed with flying colors,” he said.

But the strike, which erupted early Tuesday as New Yorkers were preparing for the Christmas and Chanukah holidays, ended without a settlement of the thorny issues that led the TWU to shut down the nation’s largest transit system.

And it saddled workers with huge fines — an average of $1,200 each — many can’t afford to pay.

“It seems like what we started with is what we are getting now,” said dissident TWU board member Marty Goodman, who voted against going back to work. “Members are going to ask themselves what it was all for.”

Listening to the Local 100 dissidents, you have to feel bad for transit workers, who bore the brunt of their leadership’s intransigence. They lost something like nine days of pay over the issue of increased pension contributions for future employees. It’s hard to see how they’re not getting screwed here.

In fact, the Daily News makes a great point in its editorial today:

Of all the players, Toussaint fell the farthest. Roll the clock back. It’s 3 a.m. Tuesday. Kalikow offers the TWU raises that totaled more than 11% over three years, plus a .5% bonus, plus a new paid holiday on Martin Luther King Day, plus continued fully paid health care coverage for life, plus a plan to address TWU grievances regarding worker discipline.

Facing deficits and skyrocketing pension costs, Kalikow also proposes requiring new workers to contribute 6% of their salaries to a retirement plan that lets them pack it in at half pay after 25 years at age 55.

And, in violation of the Taylor Law, Toussaint walks, calling that single absolutely reasonable negotiating term an insult.

Now, after the invaluable intercession of three state mediators led by Richard Curreri, Toussaint is coming back to the table, where he’ll have to make concessions. Curreri signaled yesterday that the talks will take into account the ability of the MTA (the straphangers) to pay. He also pointed to a tradeoff: The MTA relents on pensions, and the TWU agrees its members will begin contributing to health care.

From the perspective of the MTA’s budget this could make perfect sense, but Toussaint’s troops may well view such a compromise as cuckoo.

It would mean that people not yet on the payroll would escape contributing to their pensions while the people who went out on strike, at great personal cost, would have to kick in for health care. [Emph. added]

So it’s possible — quite possible — transit workers will get a worse deal in the end.

The Transport Workers Union has allowed its membership to return to work while negotiations continue between the union and the MTA:

Spelling enormous relief for the city’s 7 million commuters, the executive board of the Transport Workers Union has voted 36-5-2 to end the transit strike that has crippled the city over the last three days.

Although a contract agreement has not yet been reached between the Transport Workers Union and the MTA, the union — bowing to pressure — voted to return to work Thursday afternoon.

Transit workers have been asked to return to their jobs immediately, although it’s estimated that it take at least until late Thursday for the transit system to start resuming normal operation.

The first sign of significant progress toward ending the three-day-old transit strike came late Thursday morning as mediators who met separately with the transit union and the MTA all morning announced that both sides have agreed to resume talks while the union takes steps to return its members to work.

Representatives from the union and the MTA unexpectedly returned to the Midtown Grand Hyatt early Thursday morning, where they met separately with mediators from the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

This time, it’s actually a Thursday Styles story that makes you want to shit, piss and take out a machine gun and blow . . . Oops, was that out loud? “A Sense of Fashion is Lost in Transit”:

The cost of a transit strike to department stores and designer boutiques in New York during the week before Christmas and Hanukkah will undoubtedly be staggering. The cost to the greater cause of fashion could be even worse.

. . .

This week the strike began amid below-freezing temperatures, inspiring a few clever style strategies, but mostly a troubling assortment of faux pas. Some of them, like what appears to be a sudden outbreak of studiously mismatched winter accessories, are inexplicable in a city that should be accustomed to dressing for long stretches of cold weather.

“People are dressing like they work in outdoor booths at the flea market,” the designer Cynthia Rowley said.

. . .

. . . [T]he lasting trend is likely to be an incorporation of clothing designed for active lifestyles into business attire. Of the hundreds of bicyclists on the West Side Highway bike path and those walking their bikes across the Brooklyn Bridge, it was hard to guess where they were headed based on their spandex pants, Polar fleece parkas and towering layers of headgear.

Tony Melillo, the Generra designer, rides a bike to work year-round. He is befuddled by this sudden addition to the landscape, what he described as packs of riders wearing “weird, leotardy types of things and oversize purple Patagonia sweatshirts.” Mr. Melillo wears his own trim black sweat pants, a thin but heavy army-green coat from Burton and a baby blue cable-knit cashmere scarf from Charvet. His inspiration comes from the professionals, bike messengers who wear leggings under loose capri-length pants to avoid sticking in the gears.

For the last couple of days, the streets under the 7 train in Queens have been eerily silent, and residents and shop owners are disoriented:

For nearly 90 years, life along Roosevelt Avenue has been pre-empted every few minutes by a sustained interruption of train clatter, as the elevated No. 7 train rumbles overhead. The 20-second interjection is loud enough to banish thought itself. It halts conversations and forces newcomers to hold their ears.

But since the trains stopped on Tuesday, the hammer of the gods has suddenly stopped, too. People who live and work along the avenue seemed slightly disoriented yesterday. The decibel level that has defined life there, as well as at other places in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx — is conspicuously absent.

“It’s strange, but the silence is more noticeable than the noise,” said City Councilman Eric N. Gioia, who represents Woodside, Queens, and grew up under the El. “When you spend your life hearing the screech of steel wheels over your head every two minutes, you almost forget what quiet is.”

. . .

Mahmud Hossain, 31, a Bengali immigrant who owns the New York Deli and Grocery at Roosevelt Avenue and 76th Street, said life on the avenue had always been about “the big noise.” For the past seven years, Mr. Hossain said, he has worked at his counter 12 hours a day, separated from the El outside by a pane of glass. Since he lives in an apartment building on the avenue, he also hears the train all night, he said.

He and his wife have a relationship based upon intermittent conversations. “When we talk to each other, part of every conversation is saying, ‘Hold on a second,’” he said.

“It’s funny to say,” he added, “but the silence is driving me crazy.”

Amazingly, some residents seem to miss the noise, a sort of 7 Train Stockholm Syndrome:

While many residents embraced the relative silence, others seemed bewildered by it, and, after only two days, even began waxing nostalgic for it.

“I actually miss the noise already,” said Cristina Fletcher, 33, a Filipino immigrant who for the past five years has lived in a building in Woodside, a half-block from Roosevelt Avenue. “You get used to it. It’s part of life here, the sound of the city. It’s strange to actually be able to walk down Roosevelt Avenue and talk on your cellphone.

“Living here is like having the subway running through your living room,” she said, “and now it’s turned off.”

News reports within the last hour indicate that transit workers may go back to work while both sides continue to negotiate:

After meeting with both sides through the night, state mediators have devised a preliminary framework for a settlement of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority contract dispute that would allow strikers to return to work later today, according to four people close to the negotiations.

The people emphasized that the details of a final settlement would take at least a day or two longer to be finalized, although buses and subways would be running before that.

The agreement, they said, would give every side some of what it asked for.

Yesterday, during Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint’s press conference in which he likened his struggle to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, he attempted to apologize to those affected by the strike:

“To all New Yorkers, I’d like to apologize for the inconvenience and beg our riders and all working people for their patience and forbearance for the inconvenience caused by our strike. There is a higher calling than the law and that’s justice and equality. Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would still be in the back of the bus.”

Let’s just get one thing straight here — an “inconvenience” is when the bus is ten minutes late. I think most would agree that this whole shutting down the entire transit system thing seems to go a little beyond mere “inconvenience.” But it also raises a bigger question: What would happen if he really wanted to put us out?

TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, invoking the memory of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks:

In an impassioned news conference, Mr. Toussaint invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as he sought to rally his troops, and New Yorkers, in effect portraying the strike as a civil rights campaign to help a work force that is largely black and Hispanic.

The Times, stating the obvious:

The burden of the strike fell unevenly upon New Yorkers of different classes.

For many living in Manhattan, the strike remained an inconvenience, not a hardship. Some, like Dave Halman, a 35-year-old Wall Street banker, worked from home the first day. On Wednesday, he was out on West 96th Street waiting for a company shuttle. “It’s fine,” he said. “We went through the blackout, 9/11 and now most people are taking this in stride.”

But for many more, the impact was harsher. Stan Decker said he had walked nearly seven miles from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to Jamaica, Queens. “They’re hurting the ordinary people, they’re not hurting the big shots,” Mr. Decker, 59, said of the union. A union member himself, he complained, “Everybody’s paying for health insurance. Why should they be different? When they overdo it like this, they hurt unions because if gives people a bad impression.

I’m just thinking what the Post is apparently saying by reprinting President Reagan’s 48-hour ultimatum on today’s op-ed page:

On Aug. 3, 1981, nearly 13,000 air-traffic controllers defied President Ronald Reagan’s warnings and federal law by going on strike. Nearly half of the nation’s flights were grounded. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Reagan issued a 48-hour ultimatum.

REAGAN: This morning at 7 a.m., the union representing those who man America’s air-traffic control facilities called a strike. . . .

Let me make one thing plain. I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike. Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I’m maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL-CIO union. But we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government’s reason for being.

. . .

It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.

Q: Do you think that they should go to jail, Mr. President, anybody who violates this law?

Reagan: I told you what I think should be done. They’re terminated.

Two days later, the president fired the 11,359 air-traffic controllers who had not returned to work.

But as the Daily News notes, firing them all is more difficult than you would have thought:

It has become an angry refrain as New Yorkers walk, bike and hitch their way through the cold with the striking MTA workers in mind: “Why don’t they just fire them all?”

According to the Taylor Law, which outlaws strikes, a striking worker can in fact lose his job.

But that doesn’t make mass firings practical, according to Jerome Lefkowitz, an architect of the law.

Everyone fired for striking could ask for an individual hearing on his or her dismissal: “It would be a very complicated and expensive process,” Lefkowitz said.

There’s also the obvious problem of quickly finding, training and dispatching people to replace the 33,700 strikers.

Haste in replacing striking workers has contributed to tragedy in the past: A 1918 transit strike, during which a dispatcher was sent to fill in for a motorman, ended in the horrific Malbone St. wreck, which killed nearly 100 people in Brooklyn.

Things I don’t want to hear right now include “New Yorkers are a tough bunch,” “It takes a lot to rattle New Yorkers” or, god help us, “It’s a New York moment”:

Not every New Yorker was dismayed by the developments.

Grinning from ear to ear, 67-year-old Charlotte Karcher marched across the Brooklyn Bridge from her home in Brooklyn Heights to her gym in lower Manhattan — then back again.

She said she was buoyed by hardy fellow New Yorkers.

“It’s a New York moment,” she said.

Not for long.

The Times op-ed board waits a day to offer its take on the strike, and it makes you wonder who exactly supports Toussaint:

The New Yorkers who took to the streets yesterday, some walking miles to work or other appointments, deserved better than the explanation they got from leaders of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union — who said they had no choice but to tell their 33,000 members to begin an illegal walkout. That’s ridiculous.

Negotiations did not have to end when they did. There was no impasse. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state entity that runs the system, had compromised on several major points at the negotiating table. When Roger Toussaint, the union chief, walked away, his members were being offered a chance to continue to retire with full pensions at age 55. New hires would have to pay into that pension, but workers would continue to pay nothing toward their health benefits. That’s a deal that many riders, including those who struggle to pay the $2 fare, would gladly take.

The authority also made other concessions, including a better wage offer, that could be seen as generous, considering that its finances will be awash in red ink for foreseeable years and it cannot just let fares skyrocket to pay for any deal it cuts for its workers.

Many other issues remain to be hammered out, but none justify a strike, especially in the frigid days before the holidays. While New Yorkers fought the freezing cold, the transit union leaders seemed to be steamed about the enormous number of disciplinary actions against their members. The issue deserves study, but even the transit workers’ parent union did not see it as sufficient reason to strike.

The only remotely contrarian position is a bland rebuke of Governor Pataki, but substantively it’s no different than the Daily News or the Post, both of whose op-eds were ready to go yesterday.

The Times’ Sewell Chan moves forward reports that the local and its parent organization are at “complete odds” with each other:

The transit workers’ union, despite taking the extraordinary step of calling its first strike in 25 years, has revealed itself over the last 48 hours to be an organization wrestling with considerable discord — a local union, in fact, that is at complete odds with its larger parent organization.

The union’s vote to strike, made at 1:15 a.m. yesterday in a closed-door session of the executive board, was opposed by three of seven vice presidents of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. A fourth abstained.

And yesterday, merely hours into the paralyzing job action, Michael T. O’Brien, the international president of the parent union, the Transport Workers Union of America, urged the city’s transit workers to abandon the strike and return to work immediately. He said the parent union would provide no money or other assistance to Local 100.

Those two facts — a lack of unanimity among its own leaders and an absence of help from fellow transit workers across the country - could complicate the union’s ability to hold up under the mounting public criticism, enormous fines and escalating attacks by the city and state’s top political leaders.

Makes you think that the Village Voice’s Tom Robbins is simply shilling for Toussaint (”[U]nion sources said an agreement was reached in which the international agreed to state its disagreement - a move aimed at insulating it from heavy fines - while allowing the local to pursue the job action.”)

Update: Or not . . . a different day, a different Robbins take — now it’s “The Transit Union’s Family Spat” . . . so which is it?

I’m still freezing my balls off and the Mayor didn’t change his clothes this morning:

This morning, with temperatures hovering around 25 degrees - which felt like 15 degrees when wind chill was factored in - Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg again walked over the Brooklyn Bridge from the city’s emergency management center to Manhattan to get to work at City Hall.

It appeared that he was wearing the same leather jacket and faded blue jeans he wore during Monday’s walk across the bridge. Instead of sneakers, he wore a pair of black tasseled loafers.

The Post finds the worst, worst, worst commuting nightmare — 67th and Madison to Cambria Heights in Queens, a total of 16 miles:

After eight hours on his feet yesterday working the overnight shift at a Madison Avenue building, a weary Andy Frederick had to walk home.

And walk, and walk, and walk.

The train that normally carried him in to Manhattan from his Cambria Heights home 16 miles away was out of commission by the time Frederick’s work day ended at 8 a.m., leaving the security guard with just two modes of transportation for his long commute — his left shoe and his right shoe.

“The cabs won’t come out to the outer boroughs,” said Frederick, who hoofed from Madison Avenue and East 67th Street to the 59th Street Bridge, then walked across nearly the entire borough of Queens. “You can walk or run.”

Not only did Frederick have to battle the wind and bitter cold that blasted him along the bridge, but he had to fight traffic. He was trying to get out of the city while everybody else was trying to get in.

But Frederick, 45, had a strategy for the distance and the cold.

“I run until I get winded,” he said, “and then I walk.”

Somebody started a TWU Local 100 Blog, and enabled comments! Unbridled public outrage at the striking union ensues:

You guys really have a lot of balls. All you do is drive around in circles. Your job isn’t hard at all. You get paid as much as cops and firemen, while much more as teachers. Something is wrong.

. . .

Everybody will know in a few hours what you actually make. And what you make is a lot comparing to majority of New Yorkers. Your strike is hurting financially the people with daily wages, people who usually have no medical insurance, no pension plans, who usually have to take mass transit because they don’t make enough money to afford anything else (and who definitely make less then TWU workers). Luckily, some of them are making your sandwiches. So, I am hoping the TWU strikers will find some spit in theirs and some piss in the beer they drink between picketing duty.

. . .

FUCK THE TWU, MAY YOU SUFFER ON CHRISTMAS!

. . .

I hope that Roger and his friends go to jail for a year and rack up so many penalties that the union itself is thrown into bankruptcy and the members are personally responsible for their penalties essentially cutting their pay by up to 35% per paycheck that gets paid back to the city. Plus, the pension fund will dry up and all those retireies who thought they had the good life go on welfare. I hope that’s what happens.

To be fair, there are some that say something along the lines of, “I’m proud of all of you that you are standing up for yourselves, your families and the rights of all workers to achieve a secure, middle class standard of living,” but those tend to be outnumbered by comments such as, “I hope Mayor bloomberg has you all arrested and you get AIDS in prison from being gang raped.” Who knows if the comments will stay up, but there they are.

[Link via.]

Update: the 733 comments were indeed deleted, but preserved elsewhere! [Link also via.]

Union President Roger Toussaint talks about “respect and dignity”, obviously respecting the fact that we froze our balls off trying to get to work:

The strike by 33,000 transit workers left some 7.7 million people, from school children to physicians, without their usual way to get around in 21-degree temperatures made chillier by a sharp wind. Some employers sent out chartered buses and vans to fetch their workers, while some people opted to stay home.

Many however, decided to drive, leading to traffic snarls as early as 5 a.m. at bridges and tunnels into Manhattan, as police officers turned away cars that had fewer than the four passengers required to enter Manhattan south of 96th Street.

So in a city where it is polite to avoid eye contact with passengers sitting inches away on a crowded subway, New Yorkers were compelled to hop into cars with perfect strangers in order to comply with the four-passenger rule.

“I was waiting and no bus came,” said Larissa Silver, 38, who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and works on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. “Then a lady pulled up in a car and said, ‘Does anybody need a ride downtown?’”

Ms. Silver, who left her house at 5:30 a.m. to get there by 9 a.m., added: “So far, I’ve been lucky, but this is just the beginning. I don’t know how I’ll get home. I have no idea.”

That’s a three-and-a-half hour commute . . . one way! Respectable!

As traffic getting on to the Williamsburg Bridge backs up to La-fucking-Guardia Airport, let’s see what the editorial boards are saying.

The Post:

The fact is that TWU members, relative to MTA riders, simply don’t have it all that bad.

Just as most state and municipal employees don’t have it all that bad — certainly not relative to the state’s overburdened taxpayers.

Government in New York is unaffordable, or will be shortly — and the time to address the crisis is now.

New York City is to be paralyzed by a union that’s fighting to preserve the rights of people not yet even hired by the MTA to retire after just 25 years of employment: The notion would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.

That’s why Mayor Bloomberg reiterated the need for Albany to introduce some rationality on pensions — which TWU President Roger Toussaint at one point deemed to be a drop-dead strike issue.

Mayor Mike wants across-the-board pension reform for new government hires — and while he may be the only major elected official saying that out loud, others are pushing for it in private.

Reform would save the city billions — which is why so many of the public-employee unions have taken such an interest in the MTA-TWU bargaining.

And while pensions have become too rich for the blood of New York taxpayers, the problem is not just pensions.

The MTA also wants newly hired transit workers to contribute 2 percent of their wages to health-care premiums. Current workers contribute nothing — the most generous arrangement of any public-employee contract.

Notes Bloomberg, “Everybody’s discovering that they cannot afford some of the things in the past that they agreed to. People living longer makes the costs of pensions much greater. The cost of medical care continues to go up, so providing those benefits without co-pay is getting more and more problematic.”

Affordability aside, equity is also an issue: Nobody in the private sector enjoys benefits of that sort any longer — but it’s the private sector that ultimately pays the bills.

The TWU — and its brethren unions — must get the message now: There has to be a way of making 21st century government affordable for all concerned.

The Daily News is even more forceful:

The full weight of the law must swiftly be brought to bear on the Transport Workers Union for having the irresponsible lawlessness to shut down the transportation system that is New York’s lifeblood. Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg must seek severe sanctions against TWU President Roger Toussaint, his treasury and, sadly, the 33,700 workers who were thrown off a cliff by their leaders.

Pataki and Bloomberg must ask a judge to:

• Jail Toussaint and his bull-headed lieutenants.
• Impose fines on the TWU that double daily and are large enough to bankrupt the union within days.
• Hit every transit worker who walks with a penalty of two days’ pay for every day out, as the law allows.

Then, Pataki and MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow must hang tough. There can be no amnesty for those who have broken the law, disrupted the lives of millions, jeopardized public safety and dealt a blow to the city’s economy. There can be no making nice to extortionists.

The state Taylor Law bars strikes by public employees, so walking out would be unacceptable under any circumstance. Here, though, it is particularly outrageous because the MTA offered 3% wages hikes in each of three years, plus the opportunity to achieve larger increases through productivity savings.

Since 1999, transit worker salaries have more than kept pace with inflation, rising to an average of $63,000 for train operators and $54,000 for conductors. The MTA proposal would have boosted those numbers to $68,000 and $59,000 while opening the door to substantially more. Toussaint responded by demanding raises totaling more than 25% and refusing what he called givebacks.

Even so, the strike is not ultimately about wages. It’s about the MTA’s health and pension costs. Because both are skyrocketing, the agency faces a deficit of almost $1 billion despite planned fare hikes. Riders and taxpayers are going to get hammered unless expenses are brought into line. And that’s just fine with Toussaint & Co.

Transit workers contribute 2% of pay to pensions and can retire after 25 years at age 55. The MTA proposed requiring new employees — and only new employees — to stay on the job until 62 and contribute 3% to their pensions. And the agency would have softened the impact by making 1% matching contributions to workers’ retirement savings. The MTA also called for new employees to contribute 1% to health coverage, a minuscule amount in this day and age.

Toussaint rejected every reasonable proposal out of hand. There was no negotiating with him because he refused to negotiate. Now he’s about to lose a fight he never should have picked. And, tragically, transit workers are going to suffer the worst consequences.

Meanwhile, the Times op-ed page is . . . silent. Well fuck them, too, while we’re at it!

Meanwhile, the local television stations are reporting that the Tranport Workers Union parent organization told Toussaint not to strike. The Village Voice, for what it’s worth, says that this was just theater:

The TWU’s announcement of its action was delayed for nearly three hours as officials of the local union, which represents nearly 34,000 members, argued with representatives of the union’s parent body who said they wouldn’t support the strike.

At one point during the discussions, Toussaint and his allies on the local’s executive board feared the international union would order them not to strike at all, or perhaps seek to place the local under receivership if it did so. But union sources said an agreement was reached in which the international agreed to state its disagreement — a move aimed at insulating it from heavy fines — while allowing the local to pursue the job action. Toussaint declined to answer questions about the dispute after his announcement.

Update: this WCBS exclusive seems to contradict the Voice scoop, suggesting that Local 100’s parent union might take over the local and restart negotiations:

Sources within other large public employee unions tell CBS2 reporter Marcia Kramer that the TWU’s international leadership is considering taking over the local and seeking a settlement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Those sources say the upper level of the TWU thinks the MTA’s latest offer is fair and worthy of further consideration and negotiation. They stand against a militant faction within Local 100 that pressed hard for a strike.

I suppose the union was serious about that whole “strike” business after all — “Transit Union Walkout Follows Collapse of Contract Talks”:

The transit workers’ union ordered a strike this morning, shutting down New York City’s subway and bus system after contract talks with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority broke down - a disruption that will prevent people from going to work, cause millions of dollars in economic damage and seriously upend the life of the city in the week before Christmas.

Meanwhile, I’m not necessarily saying, “He’s saying what we’re thinking,” but . . . hmm, I’m just saying:

At the corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets in the downtown financial district, Christian Kerr, 28, a foreign currency analyst, was assessing his options for getting to his office adjacent to Grand Central Terminal in midtown.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get to work, honestly,” he said. He thought he might take one of the ferries to the 30’s and walk.

“It’s a pain in the neck,” he said. “I’m very anti-union, especially this time of year. It’s ridiculous. If you look what they’re asking for, that’s 50 years ago. Pensions don’t work like that anymore. I’d kill for what they’re asking for.”

And it’s worse than you think. The MTA dropped its most expensive demands:

The transportation authority’s 11th-hour offer included a 3 percent raise in the first year, 4 percent in the second year and 3.5 percent in the third year of a new contract, representatives on both sides said. Before yesterday, it was offering 3 percent a year for three straight years.

The authority dropped its demand to raise the retirement age for a full pension to 62 for new employees, up from 55 for current employees. But the authority proposed that all future transit workers pay 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay.

The transportation authority asserts that it needs to bring its soaring pension costs under control to stave off future deficits. But union leaders vow that they will not sell out future transit workers by saddling them with lesser benefits.

Wait a second . . . they’re striking over a four percent contribution to their pension plan . . . for future employees?! You know what? [*Expletive in verb form deleted] you and your stupid strike you overpaid pieces of [expletive in noun form deleted]. That’s not a [expletive in gerund form deleted] bad deal.

Plus, the later retirement age is off the [expletive in gerund form deleted] table. Cops, firefighters and sanitation employees deserve to retire early — because those jobs are either physically taxing or dangerous. Selling tokens is not the same thing. Get your [expletive in adjective form deleted] asses back to the bargaining table. Jerkoffs [expletive preserved to reinforce how pissed off some of us are].

*Expletives deleted lest we, the riding public, be accused of “not respecting” the TWU.