Three Days Later, Right Back Where We Started

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.