Next stop, arbitration.
The MTA yesterday petitioned a state board to send their contract dispute to binding arbitration – and opened the gambit with an offer to the transit workers that is worse than the one they voted down last week.
If approved by the Public Employment Relations Board, the contract would be put in the hands of a three-member panel and would no longer require a vote by the city’s 33,000 bus and subway workers.
Though he’s still willing to sit down with Transport Workers Union boss Roger Toussaint, MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said that for the sake of New Yorkers, arbitration appeared to be the best course.
“We will never leave the table, we’ll always talk about issues, but you need to understand that we have financial constraints,” Kalikow said. “While we can talk about issues, a lot of the financial incentives we have given them are probably as much as we can give.”
The three members of the Public Employment Relations Board – all appointed by Gov. Pataki – will first notify the union of the petition and give them an opportunity over the next 10 days to respond. Under the state’s Taylor Law, which governs strikes and contract disputes, only one party needs to request arbitration in order to get it.
Once granted, both sides would appoint one representative to an arbitration panel and then, through a complicated process, they would have to agree on a third independent member.
Union leaders say they refuse to agree to arbitration, although labor experts contend that short of another strike, they may not have a choice.
“We’re going to do everything we can to resist,” said Ed Watt, the union’s secretary-treasurer, refusing to rule out a strike.
The agency’s new proposal calls for the same 3, 4, and 3.5 percent raises, and the same 1.5 percent health-insurance contribution.
But the new offer would also double the pension costs for new employees to 4 percent, the contract deadline would be moved to March 15, making the threat of a strike less ominous, and conductors would be forced to roam the trains instead of remaining in the booth.
“Everything that was taken off is back on the table,” MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said.
Toussaint led the union on a three-day illegal strike last month because he refused to sell out new employees.
To union leaders who campaigned against the earlier contract offer, the new terms are even more unacceptable and make it patently clear that the strike was all for nothing.
“This is just a slap in the face, and the members won’t be happy with it at all,” said TWU vice president Ainsley Stewart, who led the campaign to vote down the contract. “We went on strike for all the wrong reasons.”
Moving the deadline from just before Christmas to just before the start of spring would all but castrate the union, Stewart said.
“It’s going to be warm out,” he said. “People would walk.”