Once more unto the labor breach

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.