Remember? Will this reoccur?

The city's 33,000 union transit workers, one month to the day after they stranded 7 million riders with a crippling three-day strike, voted Friday to reject their new three-year contract.

The workers, by a seven-vote margin out of more than 22,000 votes cast, opted to reject Transport Workers Union local president Roger Toussaint's call for ratification and follow the lead of a dissident group urging rejection. The voting ended at noon Friday.

Toussaint announced the surprising vote at a Manhattan news conference.

BREAKING NEWS!!! TWU REJECTS NEW CONTRACT!!!

Remember? Will this reoccur?

The city’s 33,000 union transit workers, one month to the day after they stranded 7 million riders with a crippling three-day strike, voted Friday to reject their new three-year contract.

The workers, by a seven-vote margin out of more than 22,000 votes cast, opted to reject Transport Workers Union local president Roger Toussaint’s call for ratification and follow the lead of a dissident group urging rejection. The voting ended at noon Friday.

Toussaint announced the surprising vote at a Manhattan news conference.

The Dec. 20 strike, right in the middle of the holiday shopping season, shut down the nation’s largest mass transit system for three days. It was the first union shutdown of the mass transit system since an 11-day strike in 1980, and left New Yorkers scrambling to find their way around the city.

But it was an illegal walkout, violating the state’s Taylor Law and putting the union’s members at dire financial risk. TWU Local 100 was already fined $3 million, while TWU workers were hit with $35 million in fines — two days pay for each day on strike.

A Brooklyn judge has yet to determine exactly how much of those fines the union and its employees will pay. Toussaint could also face jail time over the walkout; a hearing scheduled for Friday was postponed.

The agreement would have provided workers with raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent over the next three years. But it would have required them for the first time to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care premiums.

The MTA agreed to pull a proposal that would have raised the retirement age for new hires from 55 or required new employees to contribute more to their pensions.

The deal was worked out in a late-night session with mediators after talks had broken down three hours after a midnight deadline.

4 Comments

  • i dont think so

    It would be kind of stupid for them to strike again. They should realize that after being forced to end the first strike without even having a tentative agreement on the table.

    Their striking force affects only the commuters, not the governing agencies, it therefore won’t help them get a better contract. They probably lost more money over the strike than they can hope to make with the pay-raise, especially if they do it again. And the offer they had before the strike didn’t affect their salaries, the offer now requires them to contribute to their healthcare costs, so they already lost personally a great deal by the first strike (albeit making it easier for new employees).

    Not to mention that the force of a new strike would be much less significant that the first for several reasons;
    >It’s not the holiday season, so it won’t affect the economy nearly as much.
    >Most commuters already have backup plans that they worked out the first time around, so we are more-or-less already prepared.
    >The city has its contingency plan, which it has perfecting via trial-and-error after the first strike, so they will be ready for it as well.
    >and last but not least, people won”t give it as much credit as the first time. They will just wait for the Roger Tuisant to be threatened with a court date/jail time again, forcing to end the strike prematurely, without an agreement again.