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TWU lawyers ask court to dismiss MTA complaint

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 1, 2010

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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AsidesPublic Transit Policy

LaHood not yet on board with Senate transit measure

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 28, 2010

As a group of U.S. Senators prepare to fight for a $2-billion transit rescue package that could help the MTA avert sweeping service cuts next month, one potential ally hasn’t yet embraced the bill. As Andrea Bernstein at Transportation Nation reports, Ray LaHood, President Obama’s Transportation Secretary, has not yet endorsed the bill. While speaking with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer yesterday, LaHood expressed concerns over finding the $2 billion without pushing the country further into the red.

“We haven’t endorsed it,” he said, “because we really need to look at how we pay for that or how the Congress is going to pay for it. But we’re in discussion with Congress on a regular basis about these kinds of transit problems — lower ridership and lower resources. It’s an issue. We’ve talked to Congress a lot about it, these things have to be paid for too, it’s one thing to say you’re going to appropriate x amount of dollars but we’ll continue to keep a watchful eye on it.”

LaHood’s press secretary later explained that the secretary’s use of present tense simply means that, as of now, the administration is not endorsing the bill. Implicit in that statement is a belief that the administration would consider supporting the transit operations rescue package if an appropriate source of funding could be found. As it is, New York, for example, would still have to face the reality of an inadequate funding scheme for transit, but if federal money can close the gap until the end of 2011, perhaps by then, real estate taxes will increase enough to cover the MTA’s budget gap.

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AsidesSecond Avenue Subway

CB 8 rejects Second Ave. advertising proposal

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 27, 2010

For the past three years, businesses along Second Ave. have struggled to draw in customers as the MTA digs out its new subway line. Many shops and restaurants have closed while others are barely hanging on. Meanwhile, the state rejected monetary grants for businesses, and a Shop 2nd Ave. initiative hasn’t been as successful as many would hope.

In an effort to attract more customers, earlier this week, a group of business owners and Co-Op residents proposed a modification of the neighborhood’s billboard restrictions. The proposal would have allowed store owners to hang billboards on buildings that are up to 100 feet away from the business entrances. Thus, proprietors could advertise above the construction site.

Community Board 8, however, rejected the measure. “We’ll look like 42nd Street,” Kathy Watts-Grossman, an Upper East Sider, said. “If you cheapen the neighborhood by putting up signage, you can’t take it back.” With few Community Board members willing to trade off some temporary advertising space in an effort to keep businesses alive, Second Ave. store owners will have to keep struggling along. As Richard Bass, a consultant who helped put forward this proposal said, “It’s a trade-off of evils. No one likes to advertise in a residential neighborhood, but no one likes shutting down businesses.”

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AsidesTransit Labor

A closer look at the spit attack leave time numbers

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 26, 2010

While the corner of the Internet devoted to New York news was all abuzz earlier this week over the spit attack time off numbers that showed some drivers taking six months’ paid leave time following assaults by saliva, Jim Dwyer took a closer look. The Times columnist did some sleuthing and determined that the numbers reported earlier this week were erroneous. Rather, union officials told him — and MTA officials supported the claim — that “of 69 spitting cases in 2009, 34 drivers came back to work for their next shift, and nine took less than ten days off.” The rest, he said, were held back by the recommendation of two doctors.

According to Dwyer, the discrepancies “hardly matter,” and even though Gene Russianoff aptly termed the MTA mess “government by anecdote,” Dwyer raises a few good points in his column. He faults the state for not allowing the MTA to escape crushing pension debt and faults the MTA for taking on too much bond-based debt while recently hiring the financial guru who got them into this mess as the new CFO. It is a giant mess.

Still, Dwyer ends his piece on an optimistic note. Although MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder and TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen have battled it out in the press recently, the two sides are slowly learning that private conversations are a better route to fiscal reform than a P.R. war. “Jay has had conversations with Mr. Samuelsen,” MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said to Dwyer. “They’re both on the same page, that the best chance of getting things done is talking quietly and less talking in the press.” Sounds reasonable to me.

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AsidesBuses

How much time off for a saliva attack?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 25, 2010

New York City’s bus drivers are generally the most vulnerable to all MTA employees. Every person who boards a bus must pass by the driver, and while new barriers are being installed in buses, the drivers are without protection from unruly riders. As such, the MTA recorded over 150 driver assaults last year, and 83 of them involved saliva attacks.

As disgusting as that sounds, the corresponding numbers reveal quite the reaction to these spit attacks. Of those spat upon, 51 took time off after the attacks, and their paid leave averaged 64 days. One driver took off 191 days — or over six months — before returning to work. Now, MTA officials and union leaders are squaring off over the time off. “We’re going to have to take a look and see what we’re going to do with that,” Joe Smith, the senior vice president of buses at Transit, said yesterday. Echoed Nancy Shevell, the MTA Board member who heads the bus committee, “You have to wonder if you can go home and shower off, take a nap, take off the rest of the day and maybe the next day. When it gets strung out for months, you start to wonder.”

TWU president John Samuelsen had a different take. “Being spat upon — having a passenger spit in your face, spit in your mouth, spit in your eye — is a physically and psychologically traumatic experience,” he said. “If transit workers are assaulted, they are going to take off whatever amount of time they are going to take off to recuperate.” Michael Grynbaum and Mary Calvi captured driver reactions, and it appears as though those assaulted are afraid of the transmission of infectious diseases, a very rare occurrence via saliva. It is debasing and humiliating to be spat upon. I don’t know the proper amount of time required to regain one’s dignity, but both stricter protection for bus drivers and a policing of time off policies are in order.

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AsidesTWU

TWU set to sue for a third raise

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 24, 2010

According to a brief item on NY1, the Transport Workers Union will sue the MTA for its 2011 raise. Under the 2009 arbitration ruling, TWU members were guaranteed raises of four percent in both 2009 and 2010 and three percent in 2011. The MTA, after losing an appeal, gave out the two of the three raises but claims it cannot afford to dish out the final three percent in January. The TWU will argue that the MTA’s actions are both “unfair and illegal,” and this legal battle will just increase the animosity that has the TWU lobbing cheap shots at the MTA leadership.

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AsidesMetroCardMTA Economics

A late-June Student MetroCard showdown looms

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 24, 2010

Because New York City Transit needs a few months’ lead time in order to prepare MetroCard Vending Machines for half-priced student passes, the MTA Board will vote on the future of free student travel during its June 23 meeting, The Post reported on Saturday. “After you hit July, it would make things really difficult,” Hilary Ring, the MTA’s director of governmental affairs, said to lawmakers last week. “It’s not like you can just flip a switch or something; it’s more complicated than that.”

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, MTA officials are engaged with state representatives on potential student travel funding plans, but time is, of course, of the essence. We need the state to understand that we can’t continue to function as a free bus service,” Ring said. In related news, New York City announced recently that it will end courtesy busing for 5000 students who currently attend schools hard to reach via transit. While the MTA will see revenues improve when students must pay, the city’s less wealthy families will suffer.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have been notably silent, at least in public, on the topic of potential rescue plans. In March, Pedro Espada, the state senate majority leader, proposed a modest bridge toll with revenues earmarked for student travel, and new council transportation committee chair James Vacca has vaguely pledged to do “everything we can” to rescue the student MetroCards. For now, though, it appears that until the economy improves, students will be saddled with footing their own bill for travel come the fall.

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AsidesTWU

Samuelsen responds to overtime attack

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 21, 2010

As the management at the MTA prepares to stop overtime and sick day abuses, those who head the labor unions are not too pleased with the news. John Samuelsen defended his workers from management’s critique today. MTA heads, he said to the Daily News, “demean their own workers publicly on a consistent basis, and they fail to acknowledge NYC Transit workers work in some of the most horrific conditions you can imagine. Several bus operators are assaulted every week, subway workers breathe in toxic fumes… We put our lives on the line to move the riding public, and when we get sick, the company tries to portray us as slackers.”

Samuelsen’s statement is not unexpected, but it misses the mark. No one is questioning the nature of the emloyees’ work. Track work is not a walk in the park, and while I don’t believe “several” bus drivers are assaulted weekly, the job is not without its dangers. In return, MTA employees can retire well before most private-sector employee cans and with a robust pension and benefits package.

What the MTA wants to combat isn’t the proper use of sick days but egregious violations of sick day policies. They want to combat lax overtime rules that allow workers to get paid for 40 hours of work while putting in fewer than 35 hours. They want to minimize overtime costs and shouldn’t be faulted for it. Publicly, Samuelsen is defending his union members. I have to believe, though, that behind closed doors, he’s more willing to work with the MTA than he has let on so far.

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AsidesMTA Economics

MTA drops Goldman Sachs

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 20, 2010

For years, the MTA has worked with financial giant Goldman Sachs on bond sales and other financial matters, but according to reports, the authority has opted to sever its relationship with the scandal-plagued company. Officials contend that Goldman’s recent legal troubles have nothing to do with the decision to drop a company that has made nearly $30 million off of the MTA since 2000. Instead, Board members have grown increasingly wary of Goldman’s handling of MTA assets. The financial giant had invested MTA money in, according to The Times, “assets that are considered more volatile than traditional fixed income arrangements,” and MTA officials did not approve of these risky interest rate swaps.

The writing was apparently on the wall for Goldman when its contract lapsed last year without a renewal. In February, the finance company dropped out of the Hudson Yards project as well. Said Gene Russianoff of this uncoupling, “The only entity in America that is less popular than the M.T.A. is Goldman Sachs.”

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AsidesMTA Absurdity

To leave the lights on or not

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 19, 2010

After hammering the MTA on safety issues related to the move to eliminate 450 station agent positions, amNew York reversed course today and is now questioning one of the MTA’s decisions designed to improve station safety. The authority, says Heather Haddon, is spending money on lighting abandoned station areas. Haddon and Julia Borovskaya found numerous examples of areas with 55-watt Sylvanina fluorescent tubes but without pedestrian access.

While the free daily calculates an energy bill at one station of over $20,000, the authority defends its lighting practices. Officials say that the lights are “necessary for security purposes, particularly for employees working in closed areas and emergency responders responding to calls. It also would be too expensive to separate the circuits in closed sections of the stations from the public ones, a transit spokeswoman said.” Safety, it seems, is not inexpensive.

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