Transit Tribulations Roll On

Roger Toussaint, boss of New York's Transport Workers Union Local 100, is trying hard to pressure the MTA into re-upping their contract proposal which Toussaint's own membership voted down in January (a corker of an outcome with a 7 vote margin out of more than 20,000 votes cast).

After the union mounted their illegal Christmastime strike, deliberately inflicting hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and considerable safety concerns on the city, the new contract proposal was - much to the membership's dismay - less favorable than the concessions the union had already won leading up to the strike.

Now Toussaint is begging for another shot at ratifying that contract.  If the MTA doesn't oblige, it's very likely the two sides will go to binding arbitration, a move Toussaint is aggressively resisting, since a fair outcome reached through good faith negotiation is a dim prospect, compared to the terms the union has managed to bully out of the MTA thus far.  (Arbitration would also nix a provision that returns - just for fun - more than $130 million in prior pension payments to existing employees, making the prospect all the less palatable to the TWU.)

Still, arbitration is supposed to kick in if the two sides reach an impasse.  Unless the MTA is feeling generous and wants to give Toussaint another chance at getting their prior offer ratified, this situation seems to scream impasse, and has for months.  The only problem is that moving to arbitration is something that some union leaders and many rank-and-file members have identified as a trigger for a second illegal strike.  It'd be hard to blame members for feeling so bold, given how meekly the Taylor Law was enforced the first time around.

Toussaint and his fellow union thugs leaders have still not been sent to jail.  Striking employees were fined no more than the wages they didn't earn on the days they missed work (per the Taylor Law, the amount of the fine is supposed to double daily) and it's still up in the air whether and how those fines will be assessed.

As the situation teeters back toward brinkmanship, one can only hope the MTA, the PERB, and/or Governor Pataki is able to redouble the credibility of the threats of real fines and jail time, should the union be inclined once again to hold New York City hostage in their campaign for way-above-market salaries and benefits.

Previously:
New Yorkers Do It Underground
A Taste of Their Own Medicine
Decision Time for Illegal NYC Transit Strikers
Fat Lady Iced
What a Deal
Roger Toussaint's Billion Dollar Christmas Present
Back on Track
The [Unofficial] Not For Tourists Guide to NYC - Strike Edition
Strike 3 (Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $62,000)
Transit Strike Update
TWU Walks Out On New york
New Yorkers Behaving Like New Yorkers
T-Minus 1 Hour: Transit Union Walks Out
No Progress on Transit Negotiations
Bracing for Bedlam
Bloomberg Steps Up
New York's Looming Illegal Transit Strike