The outlaw leadership of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 is scheduled to meet today, our Jeremy Smerd reports at page one. It could be set to approve a contract offer from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but New Yorkers don’t know that for sure, nor do we know what is in the contract, because of the “media blackout” that the MTA and the union imposed in connection with the end of the strike.

Neither the union nor the MTA leadership has earned the confidence of the public that would be necessary to justify a “media blackout.” The union has broken the law prohibiting a strike and wreaked economic devastation on New York retailers. The MTA leadership has mismanaged the trains, the labor negotiations, and the authority’s budget. If ever there were a need for press scrutiny and public accountability, this is the moment and the situation.

Instead, the authority and the union may well be taking advantage of the Christmas weekend and the “media blackout” to ink a contract that concedes to the lawbreaking unionists the key point that Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg were trying to win in the labor negotiations. That is, the idea of the workers bearing more of a share of their pension costs. The spin may be that the union concessions on health care costs are equal to the cost of the pensions. But only in the parallel universe of New York public employee contracts are pension and health care concessions an either/or proposition. In the private sector reality, most employees contribute to their health care costs and they help fund their own retirements – which, incidentally, begin long after age 55, when the transit workers retire.

Mr. Bloomberg memorably said in respect of potential concessions to the striking transit workers, “I don’t know how you’d explain to your kids that if you break the law you get a better deal than if you’re honest.” This is a message that wasn’t heard at the MTA or at the TWU. Someone at the MTA or the union seems to think that if you impose a “media blackout,” you don’t have to account to the public that pays the way, at least until after the deal is done. So whether the media blackout becomes a cover for rewarding the union for its illegal strike is shaping up not only as a test of the union and the MTA management but of Messrs. Bloomberg and Pataki and the political leadership in Albany.