<blockquote><http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/nyregion/ nyregionspecial3/29mta.html> December 29, 2005 News Analysis New York Transit Deal Shows Union's Success on Many Fronts
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE He was excoriated on tabloid front pages and by the mayor and governor. As thousands streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge on a frigid night during last week's transit strike, someone in a car yelled out his name, prefacing it with a curse.
But now, a day after details of an agreement between the transit workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were spelled out, Roger Toussaint, the union's president, seems to have emerged in a far better position than seemed likely just a few days ago.
Mr. Toussaint, whose back appeared to be against the wall last week, can boast of a tentative 37-month contract that meets most of his goals, including raises above the inflation rate and no concessions on pensions. Indeed, several fiscal and labor experts said yesterday that Mr. Toussaint and his union appeared to have bested the transit authority in their contract dispute.
The authority did not come away empty-handed, however, as it obtained a major concession: For the first time, the 33,700 transit workers will pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.
But if there is a real winner in the walkout that hobbled the city at the height of the holiday season, it is the union members who went out on strike, and the man who led them.
"It's a good contract for the union in that it does keep in place, for the most part, benefits that are extremely favorable to them," said Steven Malanga, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, who called last week for firing the strikers. "For them, you can say this is a great deal."
When Mr. Toussaint appeared before television cameras at 11 p.m. on Tuesday to announce the settlement, he commented little except to read an impressive list of new worker-friendly provisions: raises averaging 3.5 percent a year, the creation of paid maternity leave, a far better health plan for retirees, a much-improved disability plan, the adoption of Martin Luther King's Birthday as a paid holiday, and increased "assault pay" for bus drivers and train operators who are attacked by passengers.
Then Mr. Toussaint announced a big surprise: Some 22,000 workers will each receive thousands of dollars in reimbursements for what are considered excess pension contributions; for several years, these workers paid more toward their pensions than other workers. For those workers, that money will easily offset the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most of them face for taking part in the illegal strike. The union itself could still face a $3 million fine that a judge ordered because of the 60-hour strike.
"The union did especially well, all things considered," said David L. Gregory, a labor relations expert at St. John's University. "Toussaint got everything he needed, and he also got what he needed in terms of the bigger picture. With the strike, he mollified the radical left in his union and helped placate the middle of his rank and file who were demanding to be treated with dignity and respect."
All this is not to say that the transportation authority did not achieve some of its major goals. By getting the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, to agree to have subway and bus workers pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health premiums, the authority took an important step to rein in soaring benefit costs. That provision is expected to save the authority $32 million a year. Not only that, the union agreed that its workers' contribution toward their health premiums might increase if the authority's health costs continued to climb.
At first glance, the authority seems to have embarrassed itself over pensions, the issue for which it appeared to draw its firmest line in the sand.
To bring its fast-rising pension costs down to earth, the authority first pushed to raise the retirement age for future employees, to 62 from 55, and then demanded that future workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions. Finally, after Mr. Toussaint said he would never sell out the union's "unborn," the authority pulled its pension demand off the table - a move that state mediators proposed to persuade the union to end its walkout.
Once the deal was announced it immediately became clear that the authority had not only scrapped its pension demands, but also agreed to a pension reimbursement that union officials say will put more than $150 million in workers' pockets. (That amount will come out of the pension funds, but the cost to the authority could be as low as $12 million if actuaries conclude that the pension plans remain adequately financed.)
"It's a very good deal," said John Paul Patafio, a bus driver in Brooklyn. "We went in with them on the offensive on pensions, and we came out of it with pension reimbursements. It's a total reversal."
Nonetheless, Professor Gregory said the authority had achieved one of its - and the mayor's and governor's - main pension goals during the dispute. "The M.T.A., as a representative of public employers, has achieved an important objective: It has put the issue of soaring public-employee pension costs front and center in the public consciousness," Mr. Gregory said.
That, he said, might pave the way for the State Legislature to enact a pension law that reduces pensions for future government workers and cuts government pension outlays.
One part of the settlement could prove a boon to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who, like the authority, is eager to rein in benefit costs.
"What happened on health care is an important precedent for the mayor in terms of the city's collective bargaining," said Charles M. Brecher, research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed advocacy group. Noting that only a small fraction of city workers now pay a portion of their health premiums, Mr. Brecher said that if the city obtained an identical provision, with workers contributing 1.5 percent of wages, it would save around $300 million a year.
Still, faced with demands to pay part of their health premiums, the municipal unions might dig in and say Mr. Toussaint accepted the concession only after the authority agreed to a huge sweetener on pension reimbursements.
Also, Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said unions might insist that the transit pact sets another pattern, one she sees as generous: raises of nearly 4 percent a year.
"If someone didn't do well in this settlement, it was probably the riding public," said Raymond D. Horton, a professor at Columbia Business School, complaining that the deal did little to hold down costs or increase productivity.
In early talks, the authority made a big issue of increasing productivity by, for example, calling for station agents to empty trash cans and station cleaners to change light bulbs and paint over graffiti. But the union got those demands dropped.
"The M.T.A. had three goals: health premiums, pensions and productivity," Mr. Brecher said. "They got one out of three - that's a far better batting average than many people get in bargaining with municipal unions."
Ed Watt, the transit workers' secretary-treasurer, praised the deal. "I think we have something that our members will ratify," he said.
He also defended the strike. "If you look at it from the context of, it was impossible to get such a contract without a strike, then obviously it was worth it."
In the view of E. J. McMahon, director of the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy, the transportation authority failed an important test when it agreed to the pension reimbursements. This, he said, negated the punitive aspects of the fine.
"If you want to calculate, 'Is it a win for the M.T.A.?' you'd want the union to be less inclined to strike in the future," he said. "You want this to do something that makes the union members think, 'I don't want to do this again.' You don't seem to do that when you offset the fine for such a large number of workers."</blockquote>
Cf. "How the M. T. A.'s Contract Offers Changed":
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"Memorandum of Understanding":
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Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>