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FOR THE RECORD
"I am running for re-election," she responded. "I am running for re-election. I am running for re-election." That would be next spring, a year prior to the American Federation of Teachers vote. Ms. Weingarten, who has repeatedly expressed support for American Federation of Teachers President Ed McElroy (who has said he won't seek re-election), said it was possible that tongues had started wagging because she recently joined other top AFT officials (she is a vice president in the national union) on a trip to Israel. "My first allegiance," she said, "is always to the New York City local [of the AFT] and to New York City." One possible explanation for the mayoral speculation about her future, she added puckishly, might involve Mr. Bloomberg's own plans. "Maybe [since] he's running for President of the United States," Ms. Weingarten said, "he enjoys sparring so much with me he wants to continue it down in Washington." *** Transport Workers' Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint got what he wanted when an arbitration ruling preserved a pension refund for more than half his members and full health coverage for retirees between the ages of 55 and 65. Both those gains were components of the contract deal his members had initially rejected, but neither had been certain to make it into the final arbitration package. Some handiwork by veteran arbitrator George Nicolau did the trick, but Randi Weingarten, in her capacity as chair of the Municipal Labor Committee, made clear after his award was issued that it included one other provision city workers could live without: the 1.5-percent contribution of their earnings that Local 100 members will have to make toward their health premiums. That concession was vital to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Bloomberg administration is sure to try to use it as leverage in upcoming health-benefit bargaining with the MLC. But Ms. Weingarten, fresh off a surprisingly pleasant bargaining experience with the city in which she got a new contract for her United Federation of Teachers members 11 months before the old one expired, made clear she wasn't ready to follow Local 100's lead. For one thing, she noted in a statement, municipal retirees already have full health coverage until they turn 65 and qualify for Medicare. In other respects, she said, "the structure of the TWU's health-benefits plan is very different from those of municipal workers." *** We learned somewhat belatedly last week that Matthew O'Reilly, a former top court system official who previously was president of the Supreme Court Officers' Association, retired in early September. Mr. O'Reilly, whose dad John had been Chief Clerk of Queens Supreme Court, stepped down as Chief of Public Safety for the Office of Court Administration, a job he had held since 1998. He previously was Chief Court Officer for the 9th Judicial District, which covers Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Duchess Counties. The younger O'Reilly began in the court system as a Laborer 35 years ago and became a Court Officer assigned to Criminal Court here in 1973. Where his father had been too busy with his courthouse duties to become a union activist, Matt quickly got involved and by the time he was 27 had been elected a vice president of the SCOA. Four years later, in 1981, he succeeded the retiring Jim Hannon as president and held the job through 1987. Since retiring, Mr. O'Reilly said, "I've been doing a lot of catch-up work around the house." He has two daughters in high school, one of them a senior, and so he's also spent a lot of time with them, looking at colleges for the older one and worrying about the soaring cost of tuition. It's a far cry, he noted, from when it cost him about $300 a year to attend Queens College at night in the mid-1970s. | |||||
