What Do We Want? A Straight-Up Vote Without The Possibility Of Binding Arbitration! When Do We Want It? Now!

After transit workers rejected their proposed contract, the Daily News reports that TWU Local 100 is unhappy about the MTA’s moving to take the contract to binding arbitration:

Bus and subway workers will fight the MTA’s move toward binding arbitration — with some even raising the possibility yesterday of a second illegal strike.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants the state Public Employment Relations Board to form a panel that could decide the terms of a contract. It will file paperwork to start the process this week, MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said.

Ed Watt, the top deputy to Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, said union leaders would “do all we can to make sure that [binding arbitration] doesn’t happen.”

But leaders of a dissident group, which fought the tentative contract, went even further.

Transit Workers for a Just Contract called for a strike authorization vote by workers if the MTA pushes aggressively for binding arbitration. In one of its flyers, it asked workers to “prepare for a possible resumption of our strike. We’ve shown that we can and will shut the city down.”

Striking over pensions is one thing — it’s a ready-made Magazine or Week in Review article! — but walking out to avoid binding arbitration?

Maybe You Assumed This Strike Thing Was Over?

Meanwhile, the MTA goes to great lengths to show the new transit worker contract was a good one, sitting down with the media to discuss the details:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority laid out a detailed defense yesterday of the settlement it signed last week, arguing that an important concession made by the transit workers’ union — having all workers contribute to their health insurance premiums — is worth more than pension demands the authority abandoned.

In an unusual interview with several reporters at noon on New Year’s Day, the authority also announced that it would urge the state to revoke the union’s ability to collect dues automatically, through payroll deduction. The loss of the “dues check-off” — which comes on top of the $3 million in fines the union faces for contempt of court and the fines faced by most workers for engaging in the illegal three-day strike last month — could cripple the union.

The authority’s director of labor relations, Gary J. Dellaverson, said the strike failed to achieve gains for the union, an assertion the union vigorously disputes. “The contract is cheaper and better for the M.T.A. than at the time that the strike commenced,” he said.

The authority’s forceful posture, following weeks of animosity with the union, underscored how bitter relations between the two sides remain, despite the deal.

Good thing there was a gag order on the principals during the negotiations because now the MTA is going on the offensive against the Governor after he claimed the side pension deal was a big surprise:

Mr. Dellaverson, asked about the governor’s claim that he did not know about the side agreement, would say only: “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.”

And what’s more, now we’re seeing brinksmanship with the issue of actually voting on the contract:

Complicating matters, a spokesman for the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, said yesterday that it would delay a contract-ratification vote by its 33,700 subway and bus workers until after the authority’s board voted. The union had planned to conduct its vote by mail early this month.

But Barry L. Feinstein, who represents Mr. Pataki on the authority’s board, said, “The board will not vote until the agreement is ratified by the Transport Workers Union, and that is historically, without exception, the way it’s been done.” If either the authority’s board or the union’s members reject the settlement, negotiations would be reopened and the union could strike again. The last time the union’s membership rejected a contract was in March 1992; the members did not strike and approved a slightly different version two months later.

Oh Lord . . .

Back-Room And Smoke-Filled

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?)

And Your Point Was What?

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.

Is There Some Light At The End Of This Stinky, Piss-Filled Tunnel?

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.