On the picket line

NYC transit workers on the move

Chanting “No contract? No peace!” thousands of Transport Workers Local 100 members and supporters marched defiantly across the Brooklyn Bridge to New York’s City Hall on Oct. 28. With spirits high during a second Day of Outrage, members wearing red Local 100 bandanas and carrying green glow sticks spanned the bridge from one end to the other. The workers were protesting the refusal of the Metropolitan Transit Authority and billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg to comply with the results of binding arbitration, which mandated that the workers receive an 11-percent wage hike over the new three-year contract.

The MTA has appealed the ruling, claiming that even this modest wage hike will jeopardize its coffers, enriched by a fare hike earlier this year. But the workers have paid enough for their valiant two-day strike in 2006. A report on www.twalocal100.org points out that if other government employers also “thumb their noses at arbitration,” that leaves “public-sector unions with no legal options,” given the Taylor Law’s ban on strikes by city and state government workers. Acting Local 100 president, Curtis Tate, pointed out at the rally that there shouldn’t be one set of rules for the government and one for the workers who keep the city running. Stay tuned.