Ex-MTA Negotiator
Connor is City Labor Deputy

By RICHARD STEIER

Margaret M. "Maggie" Connor, a veteran negotiator with more than 20 years' experience at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is the city's new First Deputy Labor Commissioner.

MTA photo/Patrick Cashin MARGARET M. CONNOR: Will deal with UFT.

She replaced Pam Silverblatt, who left in January to become Vice Chancellor for Labor Relations at the City University of New York.

Runs Health, 'Comp' Plans

Among Ms. Connor's primary duties will be coordinating the city's health-benefits and deferred-compensation programs and serving as lead negotiator with the United Federation of Teachers, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, and the Professional Staff Congress. She will also be second chair to Labor Commissioner James F. Hanley in his dealings with other municipal unions.

"It's different players, different issues, same work," Ms. Connor said in a phone interview March 28 when asked about the transition from dealing primarily with mass-transit issues. She noted also that for the past two years she has been head of the MTA's Human Resources Department, covering many of the same matters that will arise in her new job concerning health benefits and deferred compensation, as well as administering its pension plan.

Interesting Era at MTA

Prior to that, she spent more than 13 years as the MTA's Labor Counsel and then Deputy Director of Labor Relations. As second-in-command to then-Labor Relations Director Gary J. Dellaverson, she noted she had to deal with strikes by employees at Metro North, the Long Island Railroad, and, most recently, the 2005 bus and subway walkout at New York City Transit.

Ms. Connor, who has twin 19-year-old sons, Austin and Derek, is a Bronx native who was graduated from Fordham University and got her law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1985.

Her first job as an attorney was at Shearson Lehmann, but it didn't last long. "They made me an insurance lawyer," she said ruefully. "I quit after two weeks and went back to waitressing."

The following year, however, she returned to the profession when Metro North's labor-relations department hired her.