NYC Transit Union to Move Toward Resuming Service
The Transport Workers Union has just agreed to move toward restoring bus and subway service in New York City after three days on strike. Mediators said this morning that the union would take steps to return to work and to the negotiating table. They also said a final agreement remains out of reach between the union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
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First, this update on the transit workers' strike in New York. After three days on strike, mediators said this morning that the union would take steps to return to work and to the negotiating table. They also said a final agreement remains out of reach between the Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation authority. Beth Fertig of member station WNYC is at the Hyatt in New York where negotiations are taking place.
And Beth, yesterday both sides sounded quite intransigent, and now they're talking.
BETH FERTIG reporting:
Yeah, there's definitely been a dramatic progress in the past 24 hours. We know that yesterday, the governor was laying down the line and saying, `You can't walk and talk,' meaning he didn't want them to continue negotiations until they returned to work. The governor controls the MTA. But then the MTA said that it was still willing to talk and then the union was laying down its own line, saying that they didn't want to talk unless the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, would take back the most controversial proposal, which was to require new employees to pay more to their pension funds than existing employees. They did not want a two-tier system. This morning, after a whole night of negotiations with eight mediators, the mediators have briefed the media, and they say there appears to be a tentative deal that would allow the employees to return to work while negotiations continue.
MONTAGNE: So does that leave New Yorkers with any timetable for the talks and also for the subways and buses to get running again?
FERTIG: It's unclear how long that would take, because right now there have been people working throughout the transit system to keep the trains running to keep the tracks free of debris, that type of stuff. But they cannot get the trains running again until the employees return to work and that's going to take a matter of time. Right now, the executive board of the Transport Workers Union is going to be meeting later this afternoon to approve this recommendation which has been made by the mediators to the union's president, Roger Toussaint. The union's president has to brief the 47 executive board members. They have to decide to approve that, and then they can return to work while they continue to negotiate. And there are still enormous issues that are outstanding, and this is an unprecedented step for this union to go back to work without a contract, because in the while history of this labor union, dating back to the 1930s, they have said no contract, no work. So this would be a huge change from their precedent.
MONTAGNE: Well, since the mediators said an agreement is still out of reach, what's getting in the way, just briefly?
FERTIG: Well, as I mentioned, pension was the most controversial proposal and so the mediators' recommendation was that the MTA would not withdraw its pension proposals, but that it would be willing to discuss whether adequate savings could be found in other areas, namely health costs. So it's up to the union now to come back with some proposals for how to generate savings, because that's what this was all about, the MTA claiming that health care and pension costs were soaring while the union was (technical difficulties) that they saw a huge surplus of a billion dollars at the MTA and they didn't believe that the costs were out of control.
MONTAGNE: WNYC's Beth Fertig, speaking from New York about the transit strike there.
Thanks very much.
FERTIG: You're welcome.
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