NEW YORK (AP) – Women working as train operators, bus drivers and station attendants in New York’s public transit system on Sunday said they intended to make existing “subhuman” bathroom facilities an issue in the talks on a new union contract.

At a sidewalk rally outside a Greenwich Village subway station, several women held up large photos showing filthy, dilapidated employee lavatories, alongside pictures of pristine facilities they said were typically available to management personnel.

“This is a key sticking point in the negotiations – dignity on the job,” said Darlyne Lawson, recording secretary of the Transit Workers Union Local 100, who led the protest.

She said women comprise 10 percent of the 33,000 transit employees and the issue had not been raised in previous contract negotiations. The bathrooms are not the same ones used by transit riders.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the nation’s largest mass transit system, declined all comment on the current contract talks Sunday.

TWU members voted unanimously on Friday to authorize a strike that could paralyze the transit system unless a new contract is reached with the MTA by midnight Thursday, when the present contract expires.

Female workers at the rally described subway system lavatories with roaches, rats, broken toilets, leaking pipes and a lack of privacy and personal necessities.

“We are helpless, and the Transit Authority (division of the MTA) needs to accommodate us,” train operator Rosalyn Carr said.

“These are health issues,” said Kathryn Taylor Davidson, a station manager.

Bus drivers must depend on gas stations or friendly bodegas along their routes, because lavatories otherwise are “almost nonexistent,” said Carol Sarauw, a driver for 18 years.

Any strike by workers would be illegal under state law, and they would face hefty fines. In 2002, the two sides reached an agreement hours after the deadline passed.

The last strike was in April 1980 and lasted 11 days.

AP-ES-12-11-05 1705EST