On track to clinch new deal

Transit pension plan would stay same

BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Transit union leaders will convene today and possibly accept a new contract - which would put an end to the labor strife that led to a three-day strike.
Sources said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Transport Workers Union Local 100 are close to a three-year pact that calls for raises of 3%, 4% and 4% for its 33,700 workers.

The framework of the deal would require all workers to contribute toward health insurance, but would not change the existing pension plan or retirement age, sources said.

While health care costs would rise, retirees would see improved health coverage, sources said.

The local's executive board has been told to report to its headquarters on West End Ave. today. It must approve any potential pact and call a ratification vote by members.

That framework, if nailed down, allows both sides to address some of their main concerns.

Union leader Roger Toussaint can say he held the line on pensions; he was vehemently opposed to raising the retirement age from 55 to 62, and fought raising pension contributions for new hires.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow can point to the workers' first-ever contribution to health premiums. Transit officials have said pension and health care costs are soaring, and that without workers paying for some of their costs, fares could rise.

Spokesmen for the MTA and TWU wouldn't discuss negotiations yesterday, citing a media blackout suggested last week by a panel of state mediators.

The pension issue was the biggest stumbling block to a deal. The union wanted to drop the retirement age from 55 to 50, while the MTA wanted it raised to 62 for new workers.

The agency also wanted new hires to fork over 3% of wages for retirement plans, up from 2% given by current workers.

That change would save the MTA relatively little money in the short term. Toussaint and other labor leaders saw it as an attempt to set a precedent so municipal unions could be pressured to accept similar concessions.

Transit workers also abhor the idea of an older retirement age because of the health risks, emotional and physical, that come with their jobs: inhaling bus fumes, working inches from the subway's electrified third rail in the subways, having people regularly jump onto the tracks to commit suicide and toiling every day in a terrorist target.

A new pension scheme for new hires also could split the union into two camps, union members feared.

The union initially sought three straight years of 8% raises, while the MTA at first offered a two-year pact amounting to a 5% wage increase, some of which was only guaranteed if sick time taken was reduced.

Bus drivers, the largest job title, have a starting salary of about $35,000 a year and a top salary, not including overtime, of about $50,000. Including scheduled overtime, the base pay rises to about $58,500.

Originally published on December 26, 2005

Pension Demand Was an Error, Chairman of M.T.A. Concedes

By SEWELL CHAN and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: January 5, 2006

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday that he had erred in making pension changes a central demand in contract negotiations with the city's transit workers, a miscalculation that helped lead to a 60-hour subway and bus strike the week before Christmas.

The chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, did not take responsibility for provoking the strike, the city's first since 1980, but he acknowledged misjudging the union's hostility to his demands that future workers accept a higher retirement age or contribute more to their pensions than current workers do.

"I put out a proposal that I thought would be most palatable to the union, and it turns out I was wrong," he said in an interview. Before the strike, Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, had repeatedly said he would not accept a pension plan that did not treat future workers the same as current ones.

Mr. Kalikow, who was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki in 2001, defended the settlement reached last week as fair. He said the union's main concession - having workers for the first time pay part of their health-insurance premiums - was more valuable than the pension demands that were ultimately abandoned.

"It didn't matter to me where I got the savings," he said.

After the settlement was announced on Dec. 27, a furor erupted over a contract provision that would give about 20,000 workers refunds of a portion of pension contributions they made between 1994 and 2001. The authority estimates that the typical worker will receive $8,400 and that the total cost will be $130 million.

The refunds require approval from Albany. In 2000 and 2001, Mr. Pataki vetoed bills that would have provided the refunds, saying that such refunds should first be agreed to in collective bargaining. Fearing that he might again veto the refunds, the union demanded a side agreement that would require the authority to pay union members $131.7 million even if officials in Albany blocked the refunds. The authority agreed.

On Sunday, Mr. Pataki said that he was "extremely unhappy" about the side agreement and had not been told about it. He argued that the refunds seemed to reward, rather than punish, the workers for engaging in an illegal strike.

Yesterday, Mr. Kalikow would not discuss what the authority had told Mr. Pataki and his staff members during negotiations, but he suggested that the provision and the side agreement could easily be misinterpreted.

"I think the deal itself is an excellent deal," he said, adding when pressed about the side agreement, "I don't like the way it was written."

The settlement needs to be ratified by a mail-in vote of 33,700 transit workers, but union officials said they might delay the vote until after the authority's board votes on the contract on Jan. 25.

"I don't think we're going to put it to the board until the union has ratified it," Mr. Kalikow said yesterday. He added that he was not sure whether to advise the board to approve the contract.

If either the board or the union's members reject the contract, negotiations could resume and another strike could be called.

Mr. Kalikow, 63, is a real estate investor and a former owner of The New York Post. He is expected to resign his unpaid position as chairman of the authority by the end of this year.

In the interview, Mr. Kalikow said he was "not happy about" the 37-month duration of the proposed contract, which would expire in January 2009, because the authority has projected sizable deficits starting next year.

"I really don't know what wages we can afford to pay in 2008," he said. "I'm not going to be there, but nevertheless I have a responsibility to leave my successors and the agency in good shape."

Mr. Kalikow said the settlement "makes a very good beginning" at addressing the rising costs of benefits. "Health care and pensions, to me, are two sides of the same coin," he said. "They're both of them running out of control, and I think we need to start making an effort to limit their growth."

He noted that pension problems affected public and private employers alike. "If General Motors can be almost toppled by this, then I think no one is immune," he said.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, who intervened as an informal mediator during the strike, said labor leaders had tried to convince Mr. Kalikow that Mr. Toussaint was adamant about not treating future workers differently.

"I'm very pleased that Kalikow sees that now," she said yesterday. "It would have been better for everyone if that had been seen beforehand."

On the eve of the strike, Mr. Kalikow personally substituted the demand for a higher retirement age with the demand for a higher contribution on pensions. The proposal failed.

Asked if he regretted his actions, Mr. Kalikow said: "God put eyes in front so we could look forward. He doesn't want us looking backward."

Transit union president Roger Toussaint was slapped Monday with a surprise 10 days in jail and fined $1,000 for his role in leading the city-crippling transit strike in December.

He has 30 days to appeal the decision handed down Monday by Judge Theodore Jones in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

"I said in December this episode represents a sad day in New York City labor relations and I still believe that," Jones said. "I'm confounded by the tortured tale of these negotiations. It is unfortunate that it had to come down to an illegal strike."

Toussaint had pleaded guilty to the equivalent of contempt of court.

The union violated the state's Taylor Law, which forbids public employees from striking.

Toussaint, the only union member given jail time, said the issues in the contract dispute are part of the larger labor movement in the city. "At the end of the day we will deal with the fines and the sentencing as unfortunate as they are," Toussaint said outside the courthouse.

He said said would speak to his lawyers about the appeal.

"We didn't do this for the purpose of celebrity," he added, regarding questions about whether the jail sentence will make him a martyr.

Toussaint was given a jail sentence even though lawyers for the MTA and the state Attorney General said they wanted community service for the TWU officials in lieu of jail time.

MTA chairman Peter Kalikow said Jones' decision "reflects the gravity of the union's decision to knowingly and willfully violate the law."

In a statement, Toussaint said before the court: "We were engaged in civil disobedience, we did so because we had to. It is the (Transit) Authority that is the chief law breaker in the transit system."

Toussaint called the work stoppage a "defensive strike" to thwart the MTA's attempt to create a two-tiered pension system.

Terry Meginniss, a lawyer for Transport Workers Union Local 100, added that "jail sentences do not serve any kind of purpose but vengeance."

The judge will hear more arguments Wednesday regarding the $3 million in union fines and the automatic dues check-off for union members, Toussaint will be cross-examined tomorrow by MTA lawyers.

The union's secretery treasurer Ed Watt, the no. 2 TWU official, received a $500 fine. The No. 3 member, Darlene Lawson, also got a $500 fine.

There was one light moment during the hearing when attorney Neil Abramson, representing the MTA, asked Toussaint if he was familiar with the agency's accounting pratices.

"Two sets of books," Toussiant quipped, referring to revelations in 2003 that the MTA kept a public and private set of financial figures.