MTA Wins Victory Over the Union In Its Bid for Binding Arbitration

In a victory for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state board ruled yesterday that its contract dispute with Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union must be settled by binding arbitration.The Public Employee Relations Board’s 11-page decision said the two sides had shown they were nowhere near being on the same page more than two months after a preliminary contract agreement was voted down by the union’s membership by a margin of seven votes.“The bargaining history of the parties, the relationship between the parties, the number and nature of the issues in dispute, the number of negotiation or mediation sessions the parties have participated in, and the number and nature of terms on which they cur rently agree, all suggest that these parties, at this particular point in time, cannot successfully negotiate a new agreement,” the board’s chairman, Michael Cuevas, and another member, John Mitchell, wrote in their ruling.The board also said the union’s recent announcement that it will conduct a second vote on the contract proposal was not grounds to stop the arbitration process, though it did say the union could go ahead with the revote and see if the MTA would accept it.“There is nothing preventing the parties from proceeding on parallel tracks,” the board wrote in the decision.The MTA in the last two weeks has been adamant in saying that the old contract deal was taken off the table when the union membership voted it down in January.The TWU’s executive board argued that the MTA had never officially rescinded the contract, which was hammered out by mediators in the form of a “Memorandum of Understanding” at the end of the three-day strike in December that crippled the city. The union last Thursday voted to send back the contract to the members for a second vote, which should be completed before the executive board’s next meeting in mid-April.The board followed the recommendation of a top state mediator, Richard Curreri, who after a failed final attempt at mediation on March 14 said he thought arbitration was the only way for the two sides to reach a contract. Mr. Curreri also said a better scenario would be for the two sides to work out a deal themselves.The board said in the decision that 70% of impasses between employers and employees are solved by mediation. Their decision reflects their analysis that a voluntary agreement between the MTA and TWU is not probable, but it doesn’t rule out a future agreement being reached without input by the arbitration panel.The union was quick to say it would go ahead with the revote despite yesterday’s decision.“Today’s PERB ruling serves neither transit workers nor the riding public,” the union’s president, Roger Toussaint, said in a statement. “Even PERB’s own mediator agrees that binding arbitration is the wrong way to settle this dispute. We will continue with our plans to resubmit this contract to our members. It is far past time to put this trying time behind New Yorkers, it is too bad the MTA disagrees.”A spokesman for the MTA,Tom Kelly, said the decision “speaks for itself.” He refused to comment about the prospect of a revote.New Yorkers shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet – a contract could be many months away, according to a professor of public labor law at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Lee Adler.Each side now has about two weeks to pick a member for the public arbitration panel that will write the binding contract. If they can’t mutually agree on a third member, the Public Employee Relations Board will put forward a list of names that will be winnowed down by the two sides. The last one on the list becomes the third member.Then begins the lengthy process of analyzing each proposal for a contract.A recent binding arbitration case for the Policeman Benevolent Association lasted more than seven months, Mr. Adler said.“It would not surprise me, especially given the challenges, that we’re not going to have any resolution until the late fall or later,” he said.The board acknowledged the possible delay in the decision, but added that the end result is a guaranteed binding contract.Another possible point of contention is what issues the arbitration board is allowed to consider. For example, the board may not accept the content of the side agreement to the contract in December that pledged about $130 million in pension money to 20,000 of the 33,700 transit workers, Mr. Adler said.The preliminary contract agreement reached in December after the illegal strike included wage increases of 3%, 4%, and 3.5% over the next three years. The MTA dropped its demand that the retirement age be pushed to 62 from 55, but the union conceded to pay a percentage of health care premiums, which is unprecedented among the city’s public sector unions.Under binding arbitration, the contract will again be started from scratch.

MTA Wins Victory Over the Union In Its Bid for Binding Arbitration

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