NYC: Support Striking Transit Workers! TWU appeal

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NYC: Support Striking Transit Workers! (TWU appeal)

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Andy Pollack

from the TWU site, which apparently was temporarily down but is right now

Transit Workers Uniion Local 100 - Dec 20, 2005

JOIN WORKERS AT THESE STRIKE LOCATIONS:

Strike Locations:

BRONX Gunhill Depot: 1910 Bartow Avenue Pelham Barn-Westchester Sq. Yard: Eastchester Rd. & Water Street Zerega CMF: 750 Zerega Avenue 180th Street Yard: 1151 East 180 Street West Farms Depot: 1100 East 177th Street Concourse Yard: 3119 Jerome Avenue Jerome Yard: Jerome Ave. & Van Courtlandt Ave. 239th St. Barn: 4570 Furman Avenue 240th St. Barn: 5911 Broadway Eastchester Depot: Interstate 95 at Exit 13 Yonkers Depot: 59 Babchicken St. Tiffany Iron: 1170 Oakpoint Avenue

BROOKLYN East New York Depot-Shop: 1700 Bushwick Avenue Flatbush Depot: Flatbush & Utica Ave. Coney Island Yard: Avenue X & McDonald Ulmer Park Depot: Cropsey Ave. & Bay Jackie Gleason Depot: 871 Fifth Avenue Pitkin Yard: 1434 Sutter Avenue Livonia Shop: 824 Linwood Shop Atlantic Ave-Bergen Street Shop: 1415 Bergen Street Linden Shop: 1500 Linden Blvd. Cozine: 50 Cozine Avenue

QUEENS Fresh Pond Depot: 56-99 Fresh Pond Road Jamaica Barn: 7815 Grand Central Parkway Jamaica Depot: 114-15 Guy R. Brewer Blvd. Corona Barn: 126-53 Willets Point Blvd. Triboro Coach Depot: 8501 24th Avenue College Point Depot: 128-15 28th Avenue Maspeth CMF: Woodside Electronic Shop: 33-33 54th Street

MANHATTAN Kingsbridge Depot: 4065 10th Avenue 207th St. Yard: 3961 10 Avenue Manhattanville Depot: 666 West 133rd St. 100th Street Depot: 1552 Lexington Avenue at 100th Street Michael J. Quill Depot: 525 11th Avenue West 53rd St Power-RCC: 53rd St. btw 8-9 126th Street Depot: 2460 Second Avenue

ALSO, AT THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE: Help TWU to communicate with the community:

TWU has hundreds of thousands of leaflets to distribute to folks coming into Manhattan over the bridges tomorrow morning (Tuesday, December 20th). They have chosen the following initial locations to leaflet the public between 6:30 and 9am. Small coffee trucks will set-up at all of these locations to offer coffee to the community. Brooklyn Bridge - Brooklyn side Williamsburg Bridge - Manhattan side Queensboro Bridge - Manhattan side Manhattan Bridge - Manhattan side George Washinton Bridge - Manhattan side 145th Street Bridge - Manhattan side

Brooklyn Bridge will be a priority location, due to the fact that Mayor Bloomberg is planning a press event to represent the City's opposition to the strike.

************************* FROM UNION'S ALTERNATIVE WEBSITE

Times: Transit Union Walkout Follows Collapse of Contract Talks

Dec. 20 - The transit workers' union ordered a strike this morning, shutting down New York City's subway and bus system after contract talks with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority broke down - a disruption that will prevent people from going to work, cause millions of dollars in economic damage and seriously upend the life of the city in the week before Christmas.

Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, which represents 33,700 subway and bus workers, announced its first strike in 25 years after feverish last-minute negotiations faltered over the transportation authority's demands for concessions on pension and health benefits for future employees.

The state's Taylor Law bars strikes by public employees and carries penalties of two days' pay for each day on strike, but the transit union decided it was worth risking the substantial fines to continue the fight for what it regards as an acceptable contract.

The union's executive board voted 28 to 10, with 5 members abstaining, to start the strike, but Michael T. O'Brien, the president of the Transport Workers Union of America, Local 100's parent union, warned the board that he could not support a strike because he believed the authority's most recent offer represented real progress.

Mr. Toussaint rejected that argument, and at a 3 a.m. news conference tried to portray the strike as part of a broader effort for social justice and workplace rights.

"New Yorkers, this is a fight over whether hard work will be rewarded with a decent retirement," he said. "This is a fight over the erosion, or the eventual elimination, of health-benefits coverage for working people in New York. This is a fight over dignity and respect on the job, a concept that is very alien to the M.T.A."

He appealed for public support, acknowledging the tremendous inconvenience to millions of commuters and tourists. "To our riders, we ask for your understanding and forbearance. We stood with you to keep token booths open, to keep conductors on the trains, to oppose fare hikes," he said. "We now ask that you stand with us. We did not want a strike, but evidently the M.T.A., the governor and the mayor did."

Peter S. Kalikow, the transportation authority's chairman, called the strike illegal and said, "These are bullying tactics. We will not accept them. Every effect that the law allows will be used on all striking members."

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking shortly after Mr. Kalikow, promised legal action against the union and urged New Yorkers to show their determination "by walking, cycling and car pooling to get to work."

The vote by the union board came after a 12-hour round of intense negotiations between the two pivotal figures in the talks - Mr. Kalikow and Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union - who bargained face-to-face yesterday for the first time since Friday.

But with just an hour to go before the deadline, Tom Kelly, an authority spokesman, said that efforts to settle the dispute had faltered after the union turned down what he called "a fair offer."

"Unfortunately, that offer has been rejected by the Transport Workers Union, and they have advised us that they were going - that they are going - to leave the building, and going to the union hall," Mr. Kelly said. "The M.T.A. remains ready to continue negotiations." Union officials would not discuss the developments as they headed into their private strategy session.

The developments capped a day in which the transit union stepped up the pressure by beginning a strike yesterday morning against two Queens bus lines, stranding about 57,000 pbuttengers in what the union portrayed as a prelude to a strike that would shut down the nation's largest transit system.

The union first threatened to shut down the whole system on Friday, but pushed back the deadline to today, seemingly to increase its leverage by warning of a walkout the week before Christmas, one of the busiest weeks for retailers. The state's Taylor Law prohibits strikes by public employees and carries penalties of two days' pay for each day on strike.

As a result of all the threats and deadlines, many New Yorkers for the second straight week felt wildly off balance, straining to figure out how their children would get to school and how they would get to work or to doctors' appointments.

Some New Yorkers backed the transit workers, some saw them as greedy lawbreakers, and some said that both sides in the negotiations deserved the public's disdain.

Warning that a strike would be illegal, Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stepped up their campaign to pressure the union, with the mayor saying that a strike would be "reprehensible."

"The city and state and courts - everybody is going to enforce the law, and anybody that thinks that they can just go break the law is sadly mistaken," Mr. Bloomberg said. "There can be no winners in a strike - it's not going to force the M.T.A. to make a settlement. If anything, it's going to probably dig them in."

At rallies outside the governor's office and in Queens alongside the striking bus workers, Mr. Toussaint and many union members trumpeted their defiance, insisting that it was more important to obtain what they viewed as a just contract than to obey the law barring strikes.

"Unless there is substantial movement by the authority, trains and buses will come to a halt as of midnight tonight," he said at a rally for the bus workers in East Elmhurst, Queens.

With anger in his voice, he added, "We maintain, as we have in the past week, that threats are not going to produce a contract and are not going to work against us." Later, at a rally outside the governor's office in Manhattan, he sought to justify a walkout by saying, "There's a calling that is higher than the law, and that's the calling of justice."

City officials have prepared an emergency plan that would increase ferry service, allow taxis to pick up multiple fares, close several streets to traffic except for buses and emergency vehicles, and prohibit cars with fewer than four pbuttengers from entering Manhattan below 96th Street during the morning rush. The city is also deploying hundreds of police officers to secure subway entrances in the event of a walkout.

The transportation authority's 11th-hour offer included a 3 percent raise in the first year, 4 percent in the second year and 3.5 percent in the third year of a new contract, representatives on both sides said. Before yesterday, it was offering 3 percent a year for three straight years.

The authority dropped its demand to raise the retirement age for a full pension to 62 for new employees, up from 55 for current employees. But the authority proposed that all future transit workers pay 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay.

The transportation authority butterts that it needs to bring its soaring pension costs under control to stave off future deficits. But union leaders vow that they will not sell out future transit workers by saddling them with lesser benefits.

Earlier yesterday, Mr. Toussaint hinted at some movement in the talks at the Grand Hyatt hotel, saying that the union would reduce its wage demands to 6 percent a year, from 8 percent a year, if the authority promised to reduce the number of disciplinary actions brought against transit workers. The authority has offered raises of 3 percent a year for three years.

The union began its strike against two Queens bus lines, Jamaica Buses Inc. and Triboro Coach Corporation, in the hope of pressuring the authority to reach an overall settlement. The walkout angered many Queens commuters and caused many to squeeze into vans and taxis.

The 707 workers at the two bus companies have been without a contract for 33 months. The authority is taking control of those two companies and five others, and union officials buttert that the strike against the companies is not prohibited because the authority has not taken full control of them.

The Public Employment Relations Board, a state body that oversees labor relations for government employees, did not issue a decision yesterday in response to a complaint that the union filed on Sunday, butterting that the authority had violated state law by including its pension demands as part of what it said was its final offer. The union has asked the labor board to seek an injunction ordering the authority to drop its pension demand.

At 9:15 p.m. yesterday, the board's executive director, James R. Edgar, said the board had not yet received the authority's legal papers replying to the union.

Many New Yorkers said a strike would disrupt their lives. Doreen Simon, 55, who lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and works as a housekeeper in Riverdale, the Bronx, said, "I'm going to stay home. What can I do? I can't take a cab to the Bronx. It's going to hurt."

The union has repeatedly urged Mr. Pataki to join the talks, trying to put the onus on him if there is a walkout. But the governor, like the mayor, says that the professionals at the authority should handle the talks.

Workers at the Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road are not expected to strike in support of transit workers. Anthony J. Bottalico, the chairman of the union that represents Metro-North engineers, conductors and rail-traffic controllers, said none of his members planned to strike.

However, two other unions, which represent Metro-North ticket collectors and track workers, have vowed to show solidarity with Local 100 by refusing to cross picket lines, and they could conceivably delay, though not disrupt, regular train service.

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Roger Toussaint: TWU Local 100 on Strike

Dec. 20 - With a one billion dollar surplus contract between the MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 should have been a no brainier. Sadly that has not been the case.

Our contract expired midnight on Thursday. In an attempt to save Mbutt Transit an in deference to our riders, we postponed our deadline and attempted to continue talking to the MTA.

The MTA knew that reducing health and pension standards at the authority would be unacceptable to our union. They knew there was no good economic reason for their hard line on this issue - not with a billion dollar surplus. They went ahead anyway, supported by the Bloomberg administration which wants to overrun Municipal Labor Unions and all City workers with down pressed wages and gutted health benefits and pension plans.

This has been combined with continued attempts by the MTA, joined by the Governor and the Mayor, to intimidate and threaten our members and their families.

This is a fight over whether hard work will be rewarded with a decent retirement -- over the erosion or eventual elimination of health benefit coverage for working people. And it is a fight over dignity and respect on the job. A concept that is very alien to the MTA. Transit workers are tired at being under appreciated and disrespected.

The Local 100 Executive Board has voted overwhelmingly to extend strike action to all MTA properties effective immediately.

All Local 100 representatives and shop stewards are directed to report to their buttigned strike locations picket lines or facility nearest you immediately.

To our riders, we ask for your understanding forbearance. We stood with you to keep token booths open, to keep conductors on the train and oppose fare hikes. We now ask that you stand with us. We did not want a strike. Evidently the MTA, governor and the Mayor did.

We call on all good will New Yorkers, the Labor Community, and all working people to recognize that our fight is their fight, and to rally in our support with solidarity activities and events. And to show the MTA that TWU does not stand alone.

Roger Toussaint, President, TWU Local 100 TWU Local 100 80 West End Avenue New York NY 10023 212-873-6000 * ================================================================ NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us ================================================================

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