Transit authority and union on collision course, again

Once again, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the 33,700 members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 are on a collision course. And more than 7 million subway and bus riders who daily use the New York City transit system face an uncertain future.

The MTA demands that the TWU submit to binding arbitration, which the union has adamantly rejected. The confrontation began two months ago when the rank and file rejected a tentative agreement by seven votes out of the 22,461 that were cast; 11,000 members didn’t vote.

Following a petition drive for a second vote by a substantial number of the rank and file, TWU President Roger Toussaint recommended that mandate to the executive board, which approved it 24 to 12. The MTA has ignored their decision and submitted new and tougher proposals, which wiped out the original contract.

The MTA restored the two-tier pension contribution to new hires, which is illegal and outside its jurisdiction. The MTA also withdrew a $131.7 million pension refund promised to more than 20,000 members who had overpaid contributions in the 1990s. These bosses demanded consolidation of titles, opening the door for the expansion of one-person train operation throughout the system.

Management stripped the maternity leave stipends, the assault pay increases for conductors, operators and bus drivers, and extended the contract expiration date in order to water down the wage package. Language was restored that require sick members to get a doctor’s note for every absence and allowed transit inspectors to stop by unannounced to check if a sick worker is home.

Toussaint has characterized the MTA’s arrogant, racist and sexist attitudes as “plantation justice.”

MTA bosses declare war on union

The MTA bosses have torn up the tentative agreement they signed. They filed these provocative confrontational proposals with the Public Employee Relations Board, the agency that sets up binding arbitration under the infamous anti-union Taylor Law. This was payback for the three-day strike that paralyzed the financial center of the world and infuriated billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki.

In a showdown with the union on safety and security, the MTA ordered that 64 subway stations around the city be left unstaffed during lunch breaks between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Local 100 charged that leaving stations unattended for even a brief time puts straphangers in peril.

Token booths have already been closed. The MTA plans to reduce personnel with technology that could increase accidents and injuries in a work environment already fraught with danger. Recently the union cited an incident involving a computer-run passenger train on an experimental trip that almost crashed into a stationary test train. (The Chief, March 17)

In the same issue, The Chief reported an accident in which a train was derailed as it entered the subway yard, injuring two workers. According to the account, the injured workers needed hospital emergency care, which the supervisor withheld for nearly two hours until a second supervisor showed up to escort them. No doubt this was done to shield management from charges of unsafe operations.

The article describes how management “sent over technicians to do breathalyzer tests and take urine samples and ordered the injured workers go immediately from the hospital to their downtown headquarters for an ‘incident assessment.’” The bosses’ concern is that too many accidents and sicknesses increase their insurance premiums. A union representative finally convinced the supervisors that one of the injured workers was “too heavily medicated with pain killers to go downtown that night.”

These are not isolated on-the-job incidents for transit workers, who labor amid dirt, dust, diesel fumes. They face the risks of accidents and long-term health problems. (This writer recalls working in the Bethlehem Steel Co. in Lackawanna, N.Y. The bosses would bring hurt workers into the strip mill to spend their shift on a cot in order to avoid recording their injuries as lost-time accidents.)

Toussaint called a news conference at City Hall on March 19 and “demanded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority agree to a second vote on the proposed contract. ... He was joined by 16 city and state officials ... [who] said the union deserved another chance to ratify the contract.” Tom Kelly, an MTA spokesperson “dismissed the idea of a re-vote ... the TWU rejected the contract, which voided the offer and began the state-mandated process for arbitration.” (New York Times, March 20)

The new vote has not begun, but the MTA has declared war on the union. The MTA officials don’t give a damn how the vote turns out. They have only contempt for the union and for Toussaint’s challenge to get back to the bargaining table and address the issues of the tentative agreement in good faith.

Organize, organize, organize

The MTA bosses’ arrogance can only infuriate the 33,700 rank-and-file transit workers. These workers need to unite and challenge binding arbitration, which will render life-and-death decisions affecting them for the next three years and beyond.

It’s time to prepare to fight back. If workers work-to-rule on trains and buses, deliberately using all the safety procedures to minimize accidents, it would be a good beginning. Rank-and-file committees need to set up early to prepare the union to fight binding arbitration. There is much outreach to be done and the TWU has the reputation, the resources and the power to voice a call for unity in the city.

Public sector unions are on the same track as the TWU. Delegates from the United Federation of Teachers, whose contract is coming up, recently called for “no contract, no work.” American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 37 is having a difficult time getting a decent contract from Bloomberg. The Professional Staff Congress—professors, adjuncts and technical workers in the City University system—has been working under an expired contract since November 2002.

This is a city in which impoverished workers are being forced to make hard choices between paying rent, putting food on the table or clothing their families. Unemployment in oppressed communities here is in the high double digits. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and huge military appropriations are eating up money and resources that city workers need. In this, the largest U.S. city, the intense concentration of workers from oppressed nationalities raises the possibility of organizing beyond bureaucratic and factional boundaries.

One million-plus workers in 400 local unions could forge a formidable and unstoppable weapon to win significant gains.