MTA Bus Workers Get 10.5% Hikes; Revise Work Rules

JOE SEXTON: Did union give up too much?

An arbitration panel has awarded Metropolitan Transportation Authority Bus workers represented by Transport Workers Union Local 100 a 2006-2009 contract that provides 10.5-percent retroactive wage increases and establishes parity with the workers in the two New York City Transit bus companies.

In a unanimous decision, the tripartite panel granted a 3-percent wage hike starting April 1, 2006; 4 percent starting April 1, 2007, and 3.5 percent starting April 1, 2008. The contract also establishes a pension with a "27- percent increase" that allows workers to retire at age 57.

Equal Pay With Similar Titles

"All employees at all five Local 100 MTA Bus properties—Yonkers, Eastchester, College Point, LaGuardia and Baisley Park—will receive parity with comparative titles at [TA Surface and the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority] going forward," Local 100 said in a statement.

Local 100 Acting President Curtis Tate did not comment beyond a written union statement. John E. Zuccotti, the independent chair of the arbitration panel, did not respond to requests for comment. Local 100 also noted that along with the wage hikes came work-rule changes.

"These changes had previously been reviewed by your officers for approval in order to get the greater gains we needed to accomplish," it said. "All of these changes will standardize work rules to practices at the TA/OA or move them in that direction. They will require changes in how we do business."

Neither the union nor the MTA would define the work-rule changes. Joe Sexton, the Queens chair for the union's Private Lines Division, said that members were worried about what these work-rule changes could mean.

"That could mean bus consolidation, Regional Bus, the whole enchilada, the whole deal," he said.

Fears 'Huge Givebacks'

While Mr. Sexton and other Local 100 Private Bus Lines officers had complained about a lack of pay and pension parity with workers in the two NYC Transit bus companies, he said he was not satisfied with the deal because he feared that the work-rule changes would constitute excessive concessions.

"We think there are huge givebacks here," he said.

Mr. Sexton, who is supporting the dissident Take Back Our Union slate in the ongoing Local 100 election, claimed that the union was withholding details on the work-rule changes so that the incumbent United Invincible slate could win more votes in the division by the June 20 deadline. The Private Lines Division is considered a hot-bed of opposition to departing Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, who is backing Mr. Tate.

The MTA and Local 100 are still submitting arguments to the same arbitration panel regarding the contract for subway and bus workers at NYC Transit, which expired in January.