On January 25 the transit bosses put back on the table one of the concessions that had provoked the December 20-22 strike by the 34,000-member Local 100: a two-tier pension plan, under which new hires would have to pay a higher percentage of their income toward their pension. At the same time the MTA sits on a $1 billion surplus. The new proposal also maintains a clause withholding 1.5 percent of workers’ wages for health coverage.

The MTA tops packaged their new proposal with a request to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) for binding arbitration. Their petition to the board also charges that Local 100 members “engaged in an illegal strike.” The union has 10 days to respond to the company’s request. Local 100 officials have spoken against binding arbitration, pointing out that it violates the membership’s right to vote on any contract proposal. The government board can declare an impasse in negotiations and set up a three-member panel with the power to impose a contract.

After the three-day strike, the MTA withdrew the pension proposal and shifted to a demand that workers make first-ever payments of 1.5 percent of wages toward their medical coverage, which was agreed to by a majority of the union executive board.

On January 20 transit workers voted down the agreement by a slim margin. The unionists opposed the payments for medical care, which were likely to increase in the next years of the contract because they would be linked to changes in health-care costs. Derrick Tingle at the Coney Island yard reflected the views of many who voted for the contract, saying, “It’s the best we’re going to get, better than with binding arbitration.”

The latest MTA offer also dropped portions of the rejected deal favorable to the transit workers: medical coverage for retirees too young to qualify for Medicare, and refunds due as many as 20,000 union members for overpayments to the pension plan.

Russell Jefferson, a train operator at the Forest Hills station, pointed to other concessions in the new MTA offer. “They’re taking away the Martin Luther King holiday. There’s broadbanding [speedup through job combinations]. They’re taking away 70-30,” he said, which will produce increased harassment over attendance.

The 70-30 policy, which was an improvement over the previous attendance plan, restricts company spying on workers who call in sick. As long as workers have not used more than 70 percent of their sick time, workers explain, the bosses can’t send agents to their homes to check on whether they are actually staying home sick. Train operator John Stevenson said supervisors would describe themselves as “zero tolerance. They’ll go after us per everything in the rule book, and when we stand up for ourselves they charge us with insubordination.”

The MTA issued more than 15,000 disciplinary actions against workers in 2004 alone. They are “vindictive,” said Jefferson, and now the bosses are “trying to force arbitration, which normally sides with the MTA.”

Meanwhile, on January 10 the PERB took the first steps toward revoking Local 100’s dues checkoff by charging the union with calling an illegal strike. The union lost dues checkoff for several months after the previous strike in 1980.

Hearings have not been set yet on these charges or on possible fines against Local 100 under the Taylor law, which bans strikes by public employees. “That law only benefits companies,” Larry Padilla, a bus driver, told the Militant January 27 at the Mother Clara Hale bus depot. “The union was strengthened by the strike.”

Arrin Hawkins contributed to this article.  
 
 
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