NEW YORK – The city’s buses and subways were rolling again this morning, just in time for the final rush of holiday shopping, after transit union leaders ended a costly three-day strike that crippled New York but still did not result in a contract agreement.
The first buses started running shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday with at least two trains following about an hour later, according to a city transit spokesman. Facing mounting fines and possible jail terms, union leaders worked out a deal Thursday after an all-night session with a mediator and then took the proposal to their board, who voted overwhelmingly to return to work.
“In the end, cooler heads prevailed,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “We passed the test with flying colors. We did what we had to do to keep the city running, and running safely.”
The deal puts the nation’s largest mass transit system back in operation while negotiations on a new three-year deal resume between the union and Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But it does not resolve the contract dispute, raising the specter of another walkout if negotiations were to fail. The chief sticking point has been pensions.
“I’m ecstatic that it’s over but I’m still really mad that they did it,” Jessica Cunningham, 21, in town for the holidays, said Thursday. “I really think it’s screwed up that they decided to strike the week before Christmas.”
The walkout, which began at 3 a.m. Tuesday, was the first citywide transit strike in 25 years, and the workers left their jobs in violation of a state law prohibiting them from striking. The law docks them two days’ pay for each day on strike.
The walkout sent millions of commuters from the city and its suburbs scrambling to find alternate ways of getting to work, and inflicted a heavy toll on the city’s economy in the week before Christmas. Bloomberg claimed strike would cost the city $400 million a day, but experts said the actual number will end up being drastically lower.
“We thank our riders for their patience and forbearance,” Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint said.
Before the deal was announced, an off-duty firefighter was critically injured Thursday when he was struck by a private bus while riding his bike to work – the first serious strike-related injury.
An upbeat mood surrounded the announcements Thursday – in stark contrast with the bitter rhetoric of the last two days, when Bloomberg traded barbs with Toussaint. At one point, Bloomberg described union heads as “thuggish,” a remark black leaders decried as racist in the context of a predominantly black union.
Gov. George Pataki, another strident critic of the union, hailed the deal as “very positive for all New Yorkers.”
But he said there is no possibility of amnesty for the fines against striking workers. “They cannot be waived. They’re not going to be waived,” he said at a Rockefeller Center news conference.
The deal came without the MTA pulling its pension proposal, which Toussaint has said is a sticking point. Richard Curreri, head of a three-member state mediation panel, said the MTA “has informed us it has not withdrawn its pension proposals but nevertheless is willing to discuss whether adequate savings can be found in the area of health costs.”
The union opposed a proposal raising contributions to the pension plan for new workers from 2 percent to 6 percent.
Toussaint, the combative president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, had recommended that his union’s executive board accept the deal. But the vote was immediately blasted by dissidents who felt the union had caved in.
“This was a disgrace,” said TWU vice president John Mooney. “No details were provided to the executive board. (Toussaint) wants us to discuss the details after Christmas.”
The breakthrough was announced just minutes before Toussaint and two of his top deputies were due in a Brooklyn courtroom to answer a criminal contempt charge for continuing the strike in defiance of a court order.
On Wednesday, State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones said he would consider fining, or potentially jailing union leaders if transit workers remained off the job. The judge has already fined the union $1 million per day while the strike lasts, although that penalty has been frozen while the TWU appeals.
After workers returned to the job, Jones adjourned all further action in the case until Jan. 20.
“I’m pleased on behalf of the people of the city of New York. Indeed, hopefully, we’ll be able to salvage Christmas,” he said.
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