MTA Strike Looms: Will Riders Be Stranded?

For Eddie Bermudez, $50 a day means being able to pay his bills and buy food. Selling copies of the Daily News for 25 cents apiece outside the Chambers Street subway station, Bermudez, 48, fears he will lose this daily income if Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers go on strike this Friday. Bermudez says not only will he be forced to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to work, he will also have few customers during what should be the busiest time of the year.
&#8220They should have done it a long time ago,” Bermudez said of negotiations between the MTA and the Transport Workers Union Local 100, &#8220not wait for the holiday season.”
If the MTA and the union do not agree on a new contract by 12:01 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 16, the union has authorized a transit strike, which would be the first since 1980. More than 7 million people use MTA subways, buses and railroads every weekday, and City Council Transportation Committee Chairperson John Liu estimated a strike would cost the city between $100 million and $350 million a day.
&#8220The MTA is playing chicken not only with the workers but with the riding public,” Liu said. He noted that the MTA raised fares, then discovered an unexpected surplus. On Thursday, Liu and 11 other council members held a press conference placing the onus on the MTA to resolve the current deadlock.
Queens delegates largely blame the MTA but encourage both sides to come to an agreement quickly, stopping short of encouraging a strike, which is illegal under the state's Taylor Law. In the event of a strike, MTA workers will be fined two days' pay for every day on strike.
&#8220The MTA's surplus was made on the backs of our workers,” said Dan Miller, recording secretary of the Amalgamated Transit Union Division 1056. Miller and his fellow transit workers held simultaneous rallies outside three Queens division garages this past Tuesday. &#8220A deadline is a deadline,” added Miller. &#8220We are prepared to stand together in solidarity and do what we have to do come Friday.”
The sticking issues are reportedly pensions and health benefits. According to a plan released last Wednesday, the MTA offered wage increases of three percent next year and two percent the following year. It would move the retirement age from 55 to 62 for newly hired employees and would ask them to contribute more toward their pensions. It would also require new employees to contribute two percent toward health care premiums. The union opposes the pension and health care proposals.
&#8220We're pleased the City Council is calling on the MTA to negotiate in good faith,” said union spokesman David Katzman.
The MTA did not return calls for comment, but as The Queens Courier went to press, Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) President Jill Levy sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein stating, &#8220In the event that we should experience a transit strike…we respectfully request that you give careful consideration to closing schools…”
As companies create contingency plans for getting employees to work, New Yorkers are going about business as usual. Bill Kahn, 53, works in sales and takes the subway daily, meeting clients across the city. He recalls the 11-day strike in 1980, when he hitchhiked across town with truckers. &#8220People were friendly and pulling together,” he said. &#8220That's probably what would happen again.”