Subway Union To Meet Today Amid Talk of a Key Concession

The executive board of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union is scheduled to meet today, setting the stage for a contract that could revolutionize public-sector labor relations in New York by requiring union members to pay a percentage of their wages toward their health benefits.The 47-member executive board of Local 100 is scheduled to meet today at 6 p.m. at the union’s headquarters on the West Side of Manhattan, to be briefed on the progress of transit negotiations – and possibly vote on a contract, according to executive board members.The board has not met since Thursday, when it voted to authorize the union’s 34,000 members, who were on strike, to return to work on the city’s subways and buses.As part of the truce brokered between the union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by three mediators, led by the director of conciliation from the state’s Public Employees Relations Board, Richard Curreri, both sides have observed a “media blackout,” leaving reporters to speculate on what a new contract would look like.Speculation has focused on the possibility that union members – whose leadership would not relent on the MTA’s demand that future employees retire with a full pension at 62 years old instead of the current age of 55 – would have to bear some of the burden of rising health care costs, which the MTA says have risen 12% a year since 2002, to $410 million annually from $291 million.In the hours just before the strike ended, Mr. Curreri reported that the MTA was unwilling to relent on the pension issue unless another cost – “such as the rising cost of health care” – could be absorbed by workers.Currently, transit workers are not required to pay any portion of their salary toward health care, and only a handful of workers who choose an alternative health care management company are required to pay co-pays.That arrangement is typical for other municipal unions throughout the city, where workers’ health care costs total about $2 billion annually, according to the director of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, Charles Brecher.Any contract that would force employees to contribute a portion of their wages toward health benefits would be novel.“The MTA would really be breaking ground for the city, when it should have been the other way around,” Mr. Brecher said.Though the mayor recently settled contract impasses with several of the city’s major unions – most notably the teachers and police unions – they are nonetheless paying attention to contract talks.“If the TWU agrees to a contract requiring any group of workers to contribute to their health insurance, it could also set an important precedent for municipal workers such as teachers, cops and firefighters, who currently are not required to contribute to their health insurance,” the director of the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy, E.J. McMahon, wrote in an e-mail.While Mr. Toussaint had publicly ruled out giving any ground on the pension issue, even for those who have not yet started work – vowing the union would not “sell out the unborn” – he has made no such declaration on health care.In fact, in a moment some executive board members now describe as foreboding, Mr. Toussaint praised during the union’s mass membership meeting December 10 the week-long Philadelphia transit strike in November.To underscore his feelings, Mr. Toussaint brought the president of Local 234 of the Transport Workers Union, Jeff Brooks, onto the stage of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, where union members later voted to authorize a strike.One Local 100 vice president, John Mooney, pointed out that after the weeklong strike in Philadelphia, union members made a noticeable concession: they agreed to pay 1% of their salary toward their health care.“Toussaint was basically saying, ‘these guys were successful with their strike.’ He was touting their contract and, guess what, I hope that’s not the case,” Mr. Mooney, said. “We’d be totally outraged if he came back with some employee contribution to health benefits. That would be a first. It’s always been fully covered by the employer.”By private sector standards, a 1% payment is on the low end of the employee contribution scale, Mr. Brecher said.A 1% contribution would translate into a $500 a year payment for a subway motorman, whose starting salary is around $50,000. That is about half the average for private sector employees, he said.Mr. Mooney said “rank and file” members have been open to the idea of contributing to their health insurance premiums if it means improved coverage. But Mr. Mooney said he was upset that Mr. Toussaint had never before brought the issue up with the executive board.“For him to go forward and make a proposal for the union’s employees making contribution to its health plan is totally new,” Mr. Mooney said.

Subway Union To Meet Today Amid Talk of a Key Concession

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