Deadline Looms as Transit Workers Endorse Illegal Strike
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With a deadline approaching this week for a possible transit strike, officials from Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority head into round-the-clock negotiations today at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan.
Over the weekend, the 34,000-member union voted to support an illegal strike if a resolution is not reached by the time their current three-year contract expires at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move was largely ceremonial, as the decision to walk off the job will be made by the union’s 46-member executive board.
The president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, Roger Toussaint, also made the union’s first specific demand for a wage increase: 8% a year for three years. He rejected the MTA’s plan, which includes a 5% total raise spread over two years.
As in 2002, when the transit union received a 6% total raise spread over three years, plus a $1,000 bonus, the union is being asked by the MTA to make concessions. In exchange for the 5% raise proposed by the MTA last week, the authority has asked workers to agree to a health plan that would charge higher co-pays and to which they would contribute 2% of their wages. Among other concessions, the MTA wants to change the retirement age to 62 from 55, and require workers to have 30 years on the job, instead of 25, to earn a full pension.
The workers now earn between $45,000 and $68,000 a year on average, including overtime.
“The problem is balancing the benefits package with the wage and salary package,” a professor of labor history at the CUNY Graduate Center, Stanley Aronowitz, said. “It has proven to be a zero sum game. Unions are scratching to maintain the status quo.”
The Transport Workers Union yesterday rolled out women’s issues in its battle over a contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, criticizing shoddy break rooms, dirty bathrooms, and what the union said is a high incidence of miscarriages for female bus drivers.
The number of women in the 34,000-member union stands at an all-time high of 6,496, with more of them in positions once held exclusively by men: subway and bus operators, conductors, and station agents.
The female workers, who last met with the MTA’s labor negotiators on Thursday, have called for a 12-week paid maternity leave, a demand they said the MTA rejected.
One bus operator in Brooklyn, Annette Cruz, said she has suffered lost wages because of prolonged absences after two miscarriages.
She blames her miscarriages in part on her work conditions – jarring bumps, the strain of operating a bus on city streets, few opportunities for restroom breaks – and says other women have similar experiences.
“All day we’re bouncing up and down, some bumps you can’t avoid,” she said. “Because we don’t have maternity leave and we have bills to pay, we don’t take a leave.”
Ms. Cruz said she missed about a month of work during each of her miscarriages. She is allotted 12 days a year of paid sick leave.
An MTA spokesman, Tom Kelly, was unable to respond to claims about miscarriages, and would not answer questions about the negotiations. He said the current health benefits package and the Family and Medical Leave Act, gives workers several options for taking a leave while sick.
“They’re covered, as virtually all other employees are, under sick leave, FMLA and health disabilities which they receive,” Mr. Kelly said. “Any increase or change in that would have to be done at the negotiating table.”
The union has argued that a portion of the estimated $1 billion surplus should be used to give workers a substantial raise. That surplus is likely to be revised yet again when the board meets on Wednesday.
The secretary-treasurer of the union, Ed Watt, who sits on the MTA board as a non-voting member, said yesterday that the final number could be $200 million more than the current estimate, adding to pressure for the MTA to increase wages.