In These Times: NYC Transit Workers Hold on to Challenged Raises

NYC

TWU Local 100 members protest in New York City.   (Photo courtesy of TWULocal100.org)

By Lindsay Beyerstein

New York's transport workers will keep the raises they won in an arbitration deal with the Metropolitan Transit Authority. On Friday, Manhattan Supreme Court judge O. Peter Sherwood rejected the MTA's bid to have the arbitration deal thrown out.

John Samuelson, the incoming president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, called the ruling "a big win for us."

Sherwood found nothing improper or unusual about the arbitration panel's decision (which I reported on for this blog back in August) to give the transport workers a raise in step with raises received by other city workers. TWU workers will get a raise on the order of 11.3%, phased in over the next three years.

It's no secret that city workers' pay rates tend to rise in step. The MTA knew it was hammering out the TWU contract on the heels of pay raises for teachers, garbage collectors, and other New York City workers.

Yet the MTA repeatedly failed to budget for a comparable increase for transport workers. Perhaps officials were overconfident in their own negotiating skills. In any event, the MTA went on to gamble and lose when it submitted its proposal to the arbitration panel. At the end of the day, the panel thought the transit workers put forward a fairer plan.

Regardless, the MTA is now pleading poverty and trying to blame the TWU for its own ineptitude at the bargaining table and in the courts.

The MTA is facing a significant budget shortfall. The agency learned in early December that a controversial new payroll tax that was supposed to add $1 billion to the MTA's budget would bring in $200 million less than expected.

The State Supreme Court ruling comes at a convenient time for the MTA. The transit authority promises to unveil a series of dramatic "doomsday cuts" in service today. Naturally, the transit authority is using the court decision as an opportunity to blame the union while announcing some tough choices that it would have had to make anyway.

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein  ·  government negotiations organized labor  ·  + share/save

MTA Proposed Cuts

New York City

MTA Proposed Cuts

The W line may be eliminated entirely under service cuts proposed by the MTA Finance Committee to be voted on by the agency’s board of directors December 16.

The MTA Finance Committee announced its 2010 budget cuts on December 14, including plans to eliminate subway lines, bus routes and jobs. Among the changes announced are the elimination of the W and Z lines, 21 local bus routes and the shortening of the G and M lines. More than 6,000 non-union workers will receive a ten percent pay cut effective in April 2010. The cuts arose from a $400 million budget loss resulting from a $143 million cut in state funding this year with an additional $49 million in cuts expected next year and a $100 million loss in tax revenue. Another cause for the budget problems is the pay raises which the agency will have to award workers over the next three years.

“These are all direct cuts to scheduled service to the public,” MTA Chief Financial Officer Gary Dellaverson said. “There’s no reason to call them anything other than that.” The agency also announced that it will lay off about 700 workers and will eliminate free MetroCards for students in New York City public schools. Currently about 500,000 school children use the passes to get to school. As a result of the cost cutting plan students will have to pay half price fares starting next year and full fares by 2011. Students are currently eligible based on age and distance from school. The program was once fully funded by the city and state.

“This is very unfair. It will be very, very expensive,” one concerned parent said.

Board members were to vote on the budget Wednesday, December 16. All of these changes could take effect by the middle of next year.

Councilmember James Vacca (D-The Bronx) and Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn (D-Manhattan) on Tuesday joined with leading transportation advocates on the steps of City Hall to urge the MTA board to reject the latest round of service cuts. Vacca and Quinn proposed that the MTA reallocate $140 million of capital funds to close the unexpected gap in its operating budget. Additional funds would come from two sources: more than $90 million in unspent federal money that may be used for operating expenses through a congressionally sanctioned process known as “flex” and roughly $50 million in MTA operating funds that are currently being used to supplement the capital budget for a total of roughly $140 million, approximately $11 million more than the $129 million that staff and service cuts are expected to save.

“If busses and subway services are cut the way the MTA is proposing, we will be creating mass transit deserts throughout New York City, stranding hundreds of thousands of people,” Vacca said. “Once again New Yorkers are paying more and getting less.”

“We normally would not favor using capital funding towards operating expenses,” Quinn said. “Under the circumstances, however, this is the only appropriate action to take.”

The MTA’s decision to hold not a single public hearing for straphangers to voice their opinion on the proposed service cuts is meeting with much criticism and anger.

“Riders have every right to be mad as hell,” Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign said. “This is a real slap in the face. I don’t think they understand how much this shreds the MTA’s credibility.”

Public meetings on the proposed service cuts will be held early next year.