Transit Union Hit With $1 Million Fine

A state Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn yesterday levied a potentially crippling $1 million a day fine against Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, raising the question of how long the union could survive as the city entered its second day of an illegal transit strike.The two sides resumed negotiations for about three hours yesterday with no progress. The discussions were described by the union’s president, Roger Toussaint, as a “formality” prompted by the introduction of a mediator, the director of conciliation from the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, Richard Curreri.Neither the court-sanctioned fines nor the presence of a mediator – the last option before talks are forced into binding arbitration – have worked yet to pressure the union to bring its 34,000 members back to work.Mr. Toussaint told The New York Sun that he was ready to return to the negotiating table “at a moment’s notice.”Mayor Bloomberg, who denounced the union for “shamefully” and “thuggishly” turning its back on the city, said negotiations should not take place until the union’s 34,000 members return to work. And in unambiguous language, Mr. Bloomberg said people’s patience on the first day of work would turn against the union in the coming days if the strike persists.“New Yorkers always support the selfless, but don’t have any sympathy for the selfish,” Mr. Bloomberg said.Governor Pataki said the union should end the strike and negotiate.“I have one comment to the TWU, end the illegal strike: Come back to the table,” the governor said.Mr. Toussaint was equally blunt in blaming the impasse on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and said people the city should hold Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Pataki accountable for the impasse that led to the strike.“They should ask Bloomberg and Pataki what happened here: with a one billion dollar surplus this should have been a no brainer. How could they let this have happen? What agenda are they pursuing to let this happen?”Mr. Toussaint, who is skillful at answering a question with a question, added: “I don’t mind being called a militant or a radical. If I was uncompromising, we would have been on strike last Thursday at midnight, isn’t that true?”Mr. Toussaint marched in short circles with about 40 picketing union members at a bus depot in Harlem last night in freezing temperatures. A container of coffee sat near an overturned 50-gallon drum inside of which crackled a warm fire.Mr. Toussaint voiced contempt for the governor when asked if Mr. Pataki could help the warring sides reach a compromise.“The governor couldn’t be helpful if he wanted to,” Mr. Toussaint said.Though both sides are expected to meet with the state’s mediator today, the heated rhetoric makes an immediate compromise unlikely.In Supreme Court yesterday the judge, Theodore Jones, who issued an injunction barring members from striking last week, lamented what he called the “ultimate breakdown” in the collective bargaining process.“This is a very, very sad day in the history of labor relations,” Judge Jones said.Early in the morning the president of the Transport Workers Union International, Michael O’Brien, a political adversary of Mr. Toussaint, urged the union not to strike, a stance that suggested an internal rift between the international and the local union.Later in court, a lawyer for the international union, David Rosen, said the parent union would not provide any financial assistance to its local, whose assets are said to be $3.6 million plus the value of their seven-story union headquarters on the West Side of Manhattan.“The union is engaged in an unauthorized strike,” Mr. Rosen said.As a result, Judge Jones withdrew the orders of contempt against the international union.Mr. Toussaint said the comments by Mr. Rosen were simply a legal maneuver to protect the international union from financial penalties and did not represent internal tensions.Negotiations Monday broke down once again over pensions. After bitterly criticizing the MTA’s desire to raise the current retirement age for new employees to 62 from 55, the authority dropped its demand. Instead, it insisted new employees pay 6% of their salary toward their pension, instead of the current 2%, but Mr. Toussaint rejected that offer as well.“That would mean a 6% pay cut for new hires effectively,” Mr. Toussaint said.Beyond the fines – which include docking every worker two days pay for every day of a strike and possibly an additional court-ordered $1,000 fine for each union member – Mr. Toussaint’s illegal action could result in his arrest, though such a move could ultimately backfire. When the union went on strike in 1966, the union’s founder and president, Michael Quill, was arrested and suffered a heart attack during the city’s 12-day strike. Two weeks after the strike ended, he died.“That made Mike Quill a hero and a martyr,” said a former deputy director of security for the MTA, Nicholas Casale, said. Mr. Casale’s father was a union member in the division of buses at the time.A spokeswoman for New York City Transit, Deirdre Parker, said efforts to maintain the system during the strike were underway. She said 300 supervisors trained to operate subway cars were driving trains on every line throughout the city to keep the rails polished and to detect track fires.Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who deployed a total of 16,000 police to blanket the city yesterday, told reporters that 800 police have been stationed to guard open subway stations. Of the 468 stations in the system, about 300 cannot be locked. An additional 200 transit police have been assigned to ride trains cruising the 660 miles of rail looking for fires and other threats to the system.

Transit Union Hit With $1 Million Fine

Transit Union Hit With $1 Million Fine

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