Oct
21
A defense and another Day of Outrage from the TWU
ByAs the MTA continues to fight the TWU’s arbitration victory, the Transit Workers Union will keep on protesting the authority’s actions. Yesterday, union lawyers filed a response to the MTA’s appeal in the Manhattan Supreme Court. As Pete Donohue reports, the 67-page appeal claims that an 11 percent raise over three years is “just and reasonable,” the legal standard for the arbitration award. Meanwhile, the union will stage another Day of Outrage next Tuesday. This time, transit workers will march from Cadman Plaza across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall at 4 p.m. on Oct. 28. For more info, check out the Local 100 poster announcing the protest.
At least the TWU is getting savvier in its choice of protest locations. The last time around, it rallied at 207th Street and in East New York, where its actions were likely to be noticed by … almost no one.
Actually, the 207th St. protest was very well attended and a lot of media showed up. 207th St. and East New York are two places where the workers are. If we protest in Midtown we have to leave work, which would be seen as a job action.
MTA has zero to none chance of getting this overturned. Needless posturing.
Think of it from the court’s perspective. Their calendar is already full. over-ruling binding arbitration would open the floodgates.
Open up your wallets a little further, folks. That sound you hear is next year’s promise of no fare increase going up in smoke.
So Walder can make 13% more than Sander this year
http://www.newsday.com/long-is.....-1.1336444
and TWU is not entitled to less than this in *3* years from now?
So what you’re arguing is that because one person who had to uproot his entire life and family from London to come be the head of a giant organization is getting paid more, so should ever single TWU worker? That’s a rather significant increase in expenditures from the $40,000 extra the MTA will pay Walder.
I’m sure the job was desirable to *begin* with—I’m sure he’s super excited he could return to run the show.
Walder deserves a raise as much as the workers do.
To argue that there is no inflation this year is not right. The feds went to the printing press and those dollars are inflated. No one ever lost money speculating on subway tokens. Let’s just hope we won’t lose with the Oyster.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/schmidt5.html
What a joke! Our genius mayor and the MTA both know this is a cost effective contract, which amounts to 8.3% over 3yrs in dollars & cents.
The power elite once again, want all the federal tax dollars for themselves, so they can continue to throw it down the black holes they call capital improvement.
The contract doesn’t even come close to inflation. It is, essentially, a pay cut.
“According to the official Consumer Price Index calculation, life has gotten cheaper for the first time in decades. If the government can show statistically that the cost of living has gone down, not up, then they can make the case for not giving a cost of living increase to social security recipients. But does this match reality? Using older calculations of CPI, the cost of living has actually increased – by roughly 5 percent!”
http://www.house.gov/htbin/blo.....tail.shtml