The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, has declined to hear the MTA’s appeal of arbitration-awarded raise for its unionized workers, The Daily News reported this afternoon. This decision effectively ends the MTA’s long-standing attempts to convince the state judiciary to overturn the binding arbitration award, and it will result in a three percent wage increase for TWU members retroactive to mid-January. “This is a huge victory for transit workers,” TWU Local 100 leader John Samuelsen said to The News. “This finally ends an unnecessary ordeal the MTA put its own employees through after an arbitration award gave us the raise.”
The legal battles the MTA has fought over this raise have been well documented on this site. I’ve always believed the MTA had a duty to pursue an initial attempt to getting a judge to reconsider the arbitration award, but with this final appeal, the authority had little chance of success. Fiscal hardship is not a viable grounds for overturning an arbitration award, and the MTA has expended considerable resources on this case. Either way, it’s over now.