Tentative contract a setback for New York City transit workers

The package includes significant concessions by the union that will be used to further erode workers’ living standards and extract even greater takeaways from other sections of the workforce in both the public and private sectors. It failed to gain amnesty for strikers, who were left open to punishing financial penalties under New York State’s anti-labor Taylor Law. They now face a loss of two days pay for every day on strike. Other penalties sought by the city, including a $1 million-a-day fine against the union for every day of the walkout, are to be finalized by a state Supreme Court judge next month.

Both New York State’s Republican Governor George Pataki and the city’s billionaire Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg are insisting that there be no waiving of these penalties and fines.

The walkout, provoked by the demand of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for massive concessions on employee pensions, demonstrated the enormous social power and rising militancy of the American working class, as well as the prevailing social inequality and class tensions that find such concentrated expression in New York, the center of world finance capital.

It also exposed the deep-going crisis of leadership and perspective that exists within the working class and the treacherous and reactionary character of the official trade unions, which, in the final analysis, played the decisive role in forcing an end to the walkout December 22 on terms acceptable to the employers.

The details of the settlement—as far as they have been made public—include a 37-month package that includes raises of 3, 4 and 3.5 percent. The extra month added onto the agreement was designed to shift the next contract’s expiration to after the holiday season. This is a significant tactical concession by the union, which will weaken the transit workers’ position when another confrontation develops three years from now. The Christmas-week deadline was lost as part of the betrayal of the 11-day strike in 1980, and it took the union a decade to win it back, only to have it surrendered again in the current agreement.

While the MTA was compelled to drop its attacks on workers’ pensions—initially a demand to raise the minimum retirement age for new-hires from 55 to 62 and require 30 instead of 25 years of service—it won a significant giveback on health benefits. For the first time, workers will be compelled to pay a premium equal to 1.5 percent of their pay. This giveback, which comes on top of existing co-pays, reportedly also includes a provision that would require the workers to contribute even more if health care costs rise faster than projected.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/tran-d29.shtml