After two long years of stop-and-go negotiations, Governor Andrew Cuomo today announced that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union had struck a tentative labor contract deal.
The announcement, which was light on details, includes five years of annual wage increases, including 1 percent in the first two years, and 2 percent in each of the final three years, paid maternity and paternity leave, improved optical and dental benefits, and, noted union president John Samuelson, pointedly, "no zeros."
"The union believes that we've achieved many of the goals that we set out to achieve," said Samuelson.
Though the deal, which represents most subway and bus workers, does include small worker increases in health care contributions ("from 1.5 to 2 percent," according to Prendegast), the deal comes with no specific work rule reforms and appears, as a whole, to be a win for the T.W.U.
And the effect on the city unions:
As Steven Greenhouse noted when he broke news of the impending deal yesterday: "if the transit workers receive a contract that contains substantial raises, that could increase pressure on Mr. de Blasio to award sizable raises, when the city already says it cannot afford."
I think one can say one definitive thing about this contract settlement:
Cuomo is not all that comfortable with his re-election prospects.
Otherwise he wouldn't have been pushing the MTA to break the pattern set for state contracts by CSEA back in 2011.
I just read a Newsday piece on the TWU settlement and this quote helps me to understand it a little better: "A TWU source noted that, while the total raises may be smaller, the LIRR unions could argue that the TWU deal is comparable with what they are seeking because the railroad unions have gone longer without a contract. LIRR unions haven't had a contract since 2010. In 2010 and 2011, TWU workers got raises totaling 7 percent."
ReplyDelete7% + 8.3% gets them 15.3% for seven years. That's in the ballpark to the 17% the fed panel recommended for the LIRR unions for six, though clearly not as good. Given the leverage they have against Cuomo in an election year, I would have held out for more. I'm also not a big fan of TWU agreeing to a 1/2 percent hike in health care payments (to 2% of base salary overall).
ReplyDeleteThe big positive to me here is, they got full retro and the CSEA pattern is now a dead pattern.
Those are big things.
But I still think they could have gotten better than they got.