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What’s next, riders ask after TWU contract defeat

By Philip Newman

The agreement was nullified when members of Transport Workers Union voted it down by a seven-vote margin last week. The overall question straphangers might well ask is what's next? Will the union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority go back to the bargaining table? Both sides have indicated readiness to do so, but neither has so far contacted the other. Will the problem be resolved by compulsory arbitration? The union says no. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to ask the state Public Employment Relations Board to declare an impasse and provide an arbitrations board. Whatever the panel decides, the transit workers would be obligated to accept. There would be no vote. The union has steadfastly rejected arbitration. “We will never accept a decision from an outsider,” TWU President Roger Toussaint declared a few weeks before the strike when the MTA suggested arbitration. The union's secretary-treasurer, Ed Watt, said recently the union would do everything possible to resist arbitration. The MTA board was scheduled to meet Wednesday, Jan. 25, for its first monthly session since the December walkout by the 33,000 members of the TWU shut down subway and bus service for three days across the city.Will the workers again go on strike?Watt said he saw no second walkout as imminent although nothing could be ruled out. Some members of the union's dissident faction have called for workers to be ready for a walkout. Toussaint has blamed the rejection of the tentative contract on what he called “individuals who have damaged the union through their self-serving actions.” He said they had misrepresented elements of the proposed contract in their zeal to scuttle the accord. Ainsley Stewart, a TWU vice president and dissident leader, was particularly angered at the part of the agreement providing that the subway and bus workers pay 1.5 percent of their pay for health care. The workers had previously paid nothing for health care. “It's unbelievable,” Stewart said.Toussaint announced Friday that the tentative contract had been defeated by a telephone and e-mail vote of 11,234 to 11,227. One-third of the union members did not vote. Toussaint, himself a firebrand in 2000 when he headed a union faction called New Directions, has long been under criticism from a more radical group in the Transport Workers Union Local 100.Toussaint campaigned vigorously against a proposal by the MTA to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62, declaring “we will not sacrifice our unborn.” That proposal was removed from the negotiating table as part of the settlement. The three-year contract proposal provided 10.5 percent in raises over a 37-month contract. The first subway and bus strike in 25 years began Dec. 20 and lasted three days, leaving millions to seek alternate ways of traveling and costing an estimated $1 billion to business. Toussaint has yet to appear in a Brooklyn court on charges resulting from calling a strike against the MTA, which was illegal under the state Taylor Law, which forbids strikes by most public agency employees. The union stands to be fined $1 million for each day of the strike and each striking worker two days' pay.Reach contributing writer Philip Newman by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300 Ext. 136.