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MTA Provoked Strike

MTA Provoked Strike

To the Editor:

(Here are excerpts of a letter sent to Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones as he considers penalties against Transport Workers' Union Local 100 for last month's transit strike, reprinted with permission of its author):

I am writing to you concerning the coming hearing in your court regarding the transit strike. My interest stems from the facts that my father was a trackman for 40 years and I had civil service jobs for over 30 years.

In my opinion, the strike was caused and provoked by the MTA [negotiators], in that they insisted that pension changes be negotiated and refused to take that item off the table despite the fact that bargaining over pensions is clearly illegal according to the Taylor Law.

Will Peter Kalikow be in front of you to explain why he allowed this clearly improper tactic? Will Gary Dellaverson be there to explain why he, as chief negotiator for the MTA, allowed this to take place?

Will the people from the Public Employment Relations Board be there to [explain] why they said it would take a week to determine if the inclusion of pension bargaining in the negotiations was proper or not?

Anyone who can read simple English can read the appropriate paragraphs in the Taylor Law, and after about 30 seconds determine that inclusion of pension bargaining is clearly illegal. This is the same PERB that is put forward as "impartial" arbitrators. Is it any wonder that they are mistrusted by the union?

The Taylor Law is slanted overwhelmingly in favor of management. Where are the sanctions against management's failure to bargain in good faith? There are none; it is completely one-sided.

In assessing penalties against the union and the workers, I hope you will take the foregoing into account, and not be swayed by political expediency or perceived public outrage.

The media, particularly the New York Post, has been rabid in condemnation of the union and the workers. I haven't seen such anti-labor/worker diatribes since the old New York Journal-American and Westbrook Pegler.

As to the political considerations, the person most responsible for this situation is our Governor, George Pataki, who controls both the MTA and the PERB. He has the delusion that he can be nominated for President. As a result, his ambition, prodded in particular by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, has caused him to take a hard line against the union in this contract negotiation.

He has tried a modified Calvin Coolidge approach. As you probably know, Coolidge, as Governor of Massachusetts [in 1919] broke a Boston police strike. This helped propel him to the presidency. Our Governor hopes the same thing may happen to him.

Will he be in your court to explain his responsibility in this matter? You and I know better.

The proposed contract has been rejected by the members, and rightfully so in my opinion. The wages at the end of the contract would be less than necessary to just keep up with inflation. The open-ended health-care contributions would cause the workers to lose money in an escalating way as the cost of health-care benefits continues to rise. There was no guarantee that the onerous discipline system would be modified - just the promise of an "impartial" fact-finder.

The corruption in our state government ... has infected the courts as well, including some of those in your own building. I hope the malaise doesn't extend to your court, and that you will use justice and fairness in arriving at your decision.

THOMAS P. CUNNINGHAM, Captain (Ret.) NYPD