Toussaint's Bad Math

To the Editor:

Mike Jerome's solid letter in the Oct. 27 Chief on the bad economics of the 1.5-percent health insurance payment for Transport Workers' Union Local 100 members in the 2005/06 transit negotiations merits elaboration.

How did the 1.5-percent health insurance concession come to pass in the first place? One version in circulation has it that Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief negotiator Gary Dellaverson demanded a major concession from the union as a quid pro quo for the $140 million pension refund for those members who had paid in their own money to join the 25/55 retirement plan from the mid-1990s through 2000, when it was made available to all.

Unsure of how to proceed, it is reported that Toussaint turned to a textile union president who proffered he 1.5-percent giveback as the best way to satisfy the MTA.

Regrettably, the TWU Local 100 leadership did not see that the 1.5-percent deduction would pit the interests of younger members against older members, and those who had bought into 25/55 against those who had not. New hires, from 2000-2005 - perhaps 20 percent of the membership - would look at a first-year raise of 1.5 percent instead of 3 percent. The same would hold for those older members who did not buy into 25/55 before 2000. Together, these two groups outnumbered by far the pension refund recipients.

Adding insult to injury was the paltry monthly payment that MTA supervisors already paid for health insurance. Their burden was well below the 1.5 percent of salary asked of TWU Local 100 members. But the leadership of TWU Local 100 did not see the warning lights that this proposal should have triggered. It proved an unwise gambit.

This matter and many others should have been discussed at the recent CUNY conference on the transit strike. Unfortunately, they were not.

RUSSELL SMITH, Former Staffer, TWU Local 100