Charity Begins at Home
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

1,200. 1,050. 870. And 4. The first three numbers represent the approximate days city firefighters, cops and teachers worked without contracts before reaching new deals. That tiny number at the end represents the days subway and bus employees worked without a contract before striking. The transit strike makes absolutely no sense.
Not only are transit workers demonstrating devastatingly disruptive impatience, but they actually like what the MTA is offering them. This strike is about pension benefits for future employees. Could this be the first time in the history of labor that workers walked off the job solely to protest what happens to people who aren’t even working yet?
The union’s commitment to protecting early pensions for future workers is inspirational, but the method is madness. The very definition of the future means there is still time. Transit workers could easily accept the basic terms of the MTA’s offer – the terms that directly affect them now-and continue hashing out the parts that apply to future workers they lovingly call their “unborn.” Strikes are presumably a last resort reserved for imminent impasses that require immediate resolution.
After four days of threatening to strike, the transit workers won a good deal at the bargaining table but refuse to take yes for an answer – even after the MTA agreed to preserve free health care (no deductibles, premiums or co-pays) for future workers for life. Current workers actually like the MTA’s offer of 11% in raises over three years, an extra paid holiday and changes to work rules. Teachers, firefighters and cops worked years before winning comparable raises – and over that time they suffered personally because of impasse at the bargaining table.
Within the next few days, the TWU will be crushed under million-dollar-a-day fines. Workers are individually are losing three days of pay for every day they’re out. If Rudolph Giuliani were still the sheriff in town, union head Roger Toussaint and his cadre would be in jail already – but Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg don’t want to make him a modern day martyr of the labor movement. While this reluctance is open to debate, the fines alone make the union’s decision unbelievable given the deal waiting on the table.
The rhetoric surrounding this strike reflects the twisted logic that has workers picketing in the first place. Rev. Jesse Jackson is diluting his distinguished record as a civil rights leader by comparing this simple contract dispute to Rosa Parks’ heroic civil disobedience that helped win black Americans equality they deserved all along. The equal rights movement was not built on the principle of retiring young. To the contrary, the notion of equality argues against preserving a prohibitively expensive benefits package subsidized by straphangers who themselves retire older and pay for doctors’ visits.
The union appropriately argues that a good pension and free health care are part of the appeal of taking an unappealing job driving buses, running trains, cleaning tracks, or selling MetroCards. The right to retire at age 55 does have some logic, given that many transit employees join the workforce soon after high school and wind up working well over 30 years in jobs that offered their only path out of poverty.
But with private sector pensions disappearing faster than a rat ducking under a subway platform, the MTA is duty bound to demand that future workers contribute more substantially to their generous payouts. The MTA’s final offer was that the new workers pay 6% of their salaries towards pensions over the first decade of work, along with a modest 1% for health care. This is not a reason to strike just four days after the contract expired.
As unions across the nation are learning, generous public pensions now come with a price. Workers either start their careers with less pay, contribute more pay towards pensions, or retire later. But the MTA leadership has done a terrible job communicating what this strike is about. Instead of talking about arbitration and injunctions, MTA leaders should be reminding us that they’re simply insisting “unborn” transit workers join the rest of the nation’s obligations to help pay for retirement.
City Hall insiders have been grumbling for weeks about the agency’s incessant inability to articulate an argument adequately. And at a private MTA meeting Thursday, board members wondered aloud why the agency was losing the PR war. Too bad these board members didn’t think of this issue before they approved a plan to spend a $1 billion surplus on the eve of the original strike deadline. It’s quite ironic, actually: Two years ago the MTA was caught cooking the books to fake budget deficits, and this year the agency is fumbling a surplus that could be used in part to make a deal.
The transit agency’s leaders know they have a perception problem. The chairman, Peter Kalikow, uses public relations veteran Marty McLaughlin for image-building and the executive director, Katie Lapp, turns to former City Hall press secretary Colleen Roche for guidance. Transit union officials have their own spinmeister, Ken Sunshine, whose day job is advising celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Barbra Streisand, and the almost-former Mr. Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey. No wonder Mr. Toussaint had that Oscar-worthy moment ripping up a court motion just as the strike threat was heating up.
Mr. Toussaint won control of the TWU by promising to restore the union’s notoriously militant edge. But Mr. Toussaint has forgotten that wars are fought to achieve an urgent goal, not simply because an army is ready and willing to risk everything. The 34,000 transit workers are loyal soldiers who appear truly convinced their strike is the right move to protect future colleagues. They should be reminded that sometimes charity really does start at home.
Mr. Goldin is a host of NY1’s “Road to City Hall,” which airs weeknights at 7 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.