Home Transit Labor Once more unto the labor breach

Once more unto the labor breach

by Benjamin Kabak

When postcards such as this one hit the streets, it's little surprise Jay Walder and labor aren't getting along.

Back in mid-August at the heigh of vacation season, the TWU issued a postcard condemning Jay Walder for taking a vacation. The MTA CEO and Chair had dared to decamp to his house in France, purchased with money earned while he worked for Transport for London and the consulting firm McKinsey. While TWU workers were being laid off, Walder was taking his time off, and this was cause for consternation. TWU president John Samuelsen even said that Walder was “an elitist rich guy totally out of touch with his workers and New York City transit riders.”

Now, as Jay Walder marks his first year in office and reflects back on the tough choices he’s had to make, labor is at the forefront of his regrets. He may have trimmed nearly $730 million from the authority’s annual rolls, but his public relations with the MTA’s labor unions, he told a York College crowd, have been far from perfect. “The biggest disappointment that I’ve had in one year at the MTA,” Walder said, “has been the inability to be able to partner with our labor unions.”

NY1’s John Mancini had more:

Walder told a York College audience that talks to negotiate new work rules and reduced benefits for new employees broke down. That’s no surprise. The folks he wants to partner with include John Samuelsen, head of the the city’s largest transit union, who has mocked him repeatedly as an out-of-touch rich guy.

“Jay Walder’s idea of a partnership is a one-way street in his direction,” Samuelsen said in a recent statement. “For Jay, it’s always about cutting transit workers’ pay and benefits, and destroying conditions of labor negotiated over 75 years.”

With nearly a thousand layoffs, it’s been a rough year for labor relations at the MTA. And in recent days, management has stepped up its call for union concessions. When the MTA board voted this week to hike fares, they heard a new warning. “We are faced with union contracts now that are truly onerous,” said MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul. “We have antiquated work rules, which makes it hard for us to modernize the system. We have pension costs and benefits that are just really going out of control here.”

It has indeed been a rough year for Walder and the unions, but the TWU, the city’s largest union, isn’t having an easy go of it either. Earlier this summer, in a contentious vote, the TWU chose to give a full benefits package to laid-off workers. Current union members may donate $5 a week to fund the health insurance coverage, and as the measure passed by a margin of just 64 votes, some current members resent the payouts.

“There are a lot of people who feel that it’s unjustified,” Ron Shpiller, a shop steward, said in August. “A lot of people feel it was not presented properly…We can’t afford to pay for our own children, but we’re going to pay for people we don’t really know.”

At the time, John Samuelsen dismissed these dissenters as a threat to union solidarity, but since August, the dissent has grown louder. As Ari Paul of The Chief-Ledger reported last week, the union’s Secretary-Treasurer and Samuelsen are now at odds. The dispute is a long and winding one involving two TWU staffers, but the animosity stems from the health care vote.

Meanwhile, to pile on even more, David Brooks in The Times blames escalating pension and benefits costs for the failure of the ARC Tunnel. “States across the nation will be paralyzed for the rest of our lives because they face unfunded pension obligations that, if counted accurately, amount to $2 trillion — or $87,000 per plan participan,” he says. “All in all, governments can’t promote future prosperity because they are strangling on their own self-indulgence.”

Brooks, never one to miss the opportunity, fingers Democrats as the culprits. The party of the left is too cozy with labor, he says, but in New York City, party affiliation matters little when it comes to union support. Everyone is both guilty and innocent.

What the future holds for these rocky relationships is anyone’s guess. Historically, the labor movement has been a boon for the American workforce as we now enjoy weekends, paid time off, sick leave, maternity leave and a variety of other benefits. But lately, pension and benefit costs have left everyone scrambling, and Walder has been slammed by the pushback from his own offensive. The TWU’s contract is up in 2012, one year before the MTA’s next scheduled fare hike. I can only imagine the state of this relationship then.

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19 comments

Johnny October 13, 2010 - 6:33 am

David Brooks is right on and he is BARELY sympathetic to republicans. Stop electing RINO’s and leftists and perhaps we’ll see some change. Chris Christie did the right thing. If you can’t pay for it, don’t build it until you can.

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Eric October 13, 2010 - 9:16 am

Johnny, you can’t read obviously… Don’t take this personally but…

David Brooks is a 3rd rate contrarian who’s at best IMHO hardly a decent commentator on social commentary, let alone transportation policy.

If pension costs are truly staggering and derailing mega-project, then what about the billions of debt that were taken on during the Pataki era?

Remember when E. Virgil Conway and his board voted to ‘refinance’ the existing MTA debt (something like a measly 4 billion) and that then ballooned into debt payments that are now larger than the City’s contribution by a factor of 4? With credit card in hand the MTA went on a HUGE bender of an unfunded spending spree. Both parties on both sides of the aisle are guilty here.

The employees under collective bargaining won arbitration regarding their contract? Work rules are rules.. Management should be trying to figure out best how to resolve these issues while moving the agency forward into the 21st century.

Surely Walder, who’s experienced with UK unions should be able to handle this (note.. the UK ATU make our unions look like girl scouts).

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Nathanael October 16, 2010 - 7:41 pm

Oddly, I suspect the TWU is behaving more intransigently and unreasonably than the UK unions. Perhaps due to a different history of management/labour relations?

The UK unions *are* tougher than our unions on the whole. I don’t expect that more intransigent behavior is going to get better results. In the UK, the union leaders would probably recognize that the work rules are management’s top priority, and would be pushing behind the scenes to get even better concessions in other areas as a tradeoff.

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peterdiddy October 13, 2010 - 9:36 am

excellent column by Brooks, whom I don’t often agree with.

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Marc Shepherd October 13, 2010 - 11:21 am

Jay Walder’s idea of a partnership is a one-way street in his direction, says the union.

And the union’s idea of a partnership is a one-way street in their direction.

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nycpat October 13, 2010 - 12:26 pm

Yeah just like the bond holders. A contract is a contract.

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Old Yeller October 13, 2010 - 4:20 pm

“The biggest disappointment that I’ve had in one year at the MTA,” Walder said, “has been the inability to be able to partner with our labor unions.”

Richard Pryor could not be funnier. You layoff a thousand workers , try to take their PERB awarded raises away, call them lazy and shiftless and you want a better relationship? LMFAO

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Nathanael October 16, 2010 - 7:36 pm

Walder offered them fair deals, similar to those offered in London.

Unfortunately, the previous managements, which had tried to pull inappropriate things, left the union biased against Walder. Stupid union leadership….

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Hank October 14, 2010 - 3:07 pm

Guess how many employees the MTA has?
~40k

Guess how many of those employees earn over $100k per annum?
~8.5k

NYC public service unions are raping our city treasury.

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Old Yeller October 14, 2010 - 3:14 pm

Hank forgot one question:

How many MTA employees in Management make over 100K per year?
70%

How many of the unionized workforce?
20%

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nycpat October 14, 2010 - 3:17 pm

Few of those workers are TWU-a NYC union. The RR unions and managment are their own thing. How much interest are they paying on the debts that were run up under Pataki?

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Nathanael October 16, 2010 - 7:35 pm

The LIRR unions are truly unbelievable. I complained about work rules at the TWU? The LIRR unions are far worse. The Metro-North unions… I don’t know much about, they seem to keep a lower profile.

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Alon Levy October 14, 2010 - 4:00 pm

New York City Transit alone has 47,000 employees.

Tokyo Metro, which carries 50% more subway riders, has 8,400.

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nycpat October 14, 2010 - 4:43 pm

NYCT does not have 47000 employees. Does Tokyo Metro include buses? Also, I believe they share tracks with other RRs; are the workers charged with the maintenance of these tracks TM emloyees?

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Alon Levy October 14, 2010 - 6:52 pm

“NYC Transit employs nearly 47,000 people in more than 20 major departments and divisions.”

Tokyo Metro does its own track maintenance, thank you very much. It also runs its own stations and administration. I’m not sure whether it uses its own employees to run the trains or not; it doesn’t matter too much, as the total difference would be in the low hundreds.

Tokyo Metro doesn’t have buses, you’re right. Toei does, and is less efficient as a result (6,300 people, half the ridership of NYCT). It’s not enough to explain the factor of 8 difference in employment per passenger.

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nycpat October 14, 2010 - 8:28 pm

Nearly 47,000. Less now with the layoffs. The largest subway fleet in the world. Largest bus fleet in North America.
Apples and oranges.

Alon Levy October 15, 2010 - 2:15 pm

Yeah, NYCT is the first in the world in input: largest workforce, largest fleet, longest track, highest operating costs. It just isn’t the first when it comes to output.

Nathanael October 16, 2010 - 7:33 pm

If the TWU were willing to change work rules, it could save (1) jobs, (2) pay, (3) benefits. But nooooo, work rules come first. I hope they wake up.

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Infighting impacting TWU cohesion :: Second Ave. Sagas November 3, 2010 - 6:11 pm

[…] early October, I briefly touched upon a simmering dispute at the TWU between union president John Samuelsen and the then-Secretary-Treasurer Izzy Rivera. The two were […]

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