Laywers for the Transport Workers Union Local 100 have asked a Manhattan judge to dismiss the MTA’s attempts at overturning the arbitration-awarded raises for 2011, The Chief-Leader reports. Last Monday, I noted how the TWU planned to sue the MTA for these raises, but now, it appears as though the legal wrangling will amount to a request to throw out the MTA’s appeal. “The law is clear: it requires that a court vacate the entire contract; not only a part of it,” Larry Cary, the TWU’s lawyer, said to Ari Paul. “The MTA is doing something not contemplated by the law. It is implementing a contract and contesting it at the same time.”
The MTA will attempt to argue that the arbitration panel did not consider the MTA’s precarious financial position when it opted to award 11 percent in raises over three years for the authority’s unionized employees. The TWU has long maintained that the authority is trying to circumvent the legal process by picking apart the award, and the judge could very well grant this motion to dismiss.
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the judge could very well grant this motion to dismiss.
As well he/she should. Whether you agree or disagree whether the employees should get the raises, the arbitrator ruled with binding arbitration, and a previous judge upheld the whole award. MTA should take the city and state to court for more funding.
Or they could just raise the fare.
It’s much more palatable for the MTA to take the city and/or state to court for more funding. How do you explain that fare hike? “Sorry, straphangers, but we had to cut your services and raise fares because our workers earned themselves an 11 percent raise, and we’re too broke to pay them otherwise.”
I don’t believe the MTA has much of a case on appeal here, but what you’re seemingly proposing would be political suicide for, well, anyone who endorses it.
“Because of the recession and the consequently lowered tax revenue we are forced to raise the fare.”
I thought the whole purpose of the MTA was to insulate planning from politics. Walder’s got a contract, right? He gets paid no matter what.
Do you think the fare too high?
I’m a T/O. I make very roughly what a Sanitation Man makes. Am I overpaid?
You’re not overpaid. However, you’re doing slightly less work than you should. If you also pushed the button that opened the door, and made the “This is 96th Street, 86th is next, stand clear of the closing doors” announcements, all would be well.
Well, DSNY got the union (teamsters?) to go along with one man trucks on some routes by ofering a substantial premium. So yeah pay me like a cop or fireman and I’ll do OPTO. However it will slow down service and the total costs of implementing it are always understated. No C/rs are goig to be laid off any time soon.
It will slow down service? Give me a break.
I have years of experience working in the NYC Subway, but hey you’re probably some sort of advanced degree transportation engineer , you must have it all figured out.
You know, there are subway systems in the world that aren’t NYCT.
I’d be stunned if this appeal succeeded. Agree or disagree with the Arbitration Award, this appeal has about as much merit as a purchase order for 20 snowplows in Miami. I haven’t seen the actual appeal but it seems like MTA has only vaguely identified one of the reasons that an Award will be overturned (a wrongful refusal on the part of the Arbitrator to hear evidence), and even at that, the standard is a refusal to hear evidence, not a refusal to weigh it with the gravity ascribed to it by the proponent.
Frankly, MTA is wasting perfectly good money by appealing this thing over and over again (and I have to wonder how long it’ll be until the courts allow TWU to collect attorneys’ fees for having to answer what is essentially the same appeal over and over again). Put the attorneys to work doing something else.
The MTA should sue to cancel the entire contract AND sue the city and state for more funding. There is nothing I would like more right now than for the MTA to fire every single union employee, Reagan-style, and then rehire them under terms considered reasonable by the majority of public and private employees in this state. A week, or month of no public transit in this city would go a long way towards convincing our pols of the importance of the MTA.
Oh, and public employee unions should be made illegal, because they violate the “one man, one vote” rule. These unions have way too much political power, and they use it against the very customers they are supposed to serve!
You don’t happen to mean the illegal transit strike during the holiday season and on some of the coldest days in recent memory?
BE Careful about what you post on this subject.
The city of White Plains just fired 21 fire & police officers under the guize of fiscal nessessity, however two recent articles in the JN & White Plains Citizans net Reporter both indicate that the money the city clamed it would be saving is going streight into the pockets of top & middle level commissioners.
So what do you think would happen with the MTA and it’s unions under similar conditions? I think I just answerd my own question.
Also if something is legally binding, you must except it. If the union lost & tried to appeal, all you would here is how they refused to except the dessision. The MTA cant keep appealing just because they can. If the MTA cant aford the raises then the top managers need to cut pay much more then the 10% that was ordered.
If differential political power were illegal, you’d have to abolish money.
The MTA went to contract with its eyes wide open, and agreed to this contract term. They requested that the other party, the union, amend this term, the union said no and that’s it. A basic tenet of contracting is that if there is an amendment provision, it must be agreed to by the parties. So going to court is non-sense, a waste of time and money. Again this is speaking generally without knowledge of the specific contract terms here. It seems that the MTA has determined that the cost associated with going to court is worth the risk as compared to the value of the raises.
More likely, the MTA is doing this just to bust the union’s chops. Any judge it his or her right mind would be irritated at the harrassment value the MTA is gaining from forcing the TWU to litigate in order just to get the MTA to do what it should be doing automatically, affirmatively and proactively, and that is simply uphold the Taylor Law.