Post by RPankn on Dec 20, 2005 20:25:09 GMT -5
Think of the impending transit strike as the price - the fare - our city pays every so often to travel toward an important destination for many New Yorkers: entry to the middle class. Many people know nothing about that journey, and frankly couldn't care less about the lives, hopes and working conditions of the 34,000-member army of token booth clerks, track workers, mechanics and bus drivers who ferry us all safely across the city millions of times every day.
The great and growing disconnect between white-collar and blue-collar workers in our town makes it hard for office workers to see, understand or respect what is at stake in this labor standoff. Few riders know, for instance, that transit workers have to ask for a day off 30 days in advance. Back in October, in an annual ritual, some MTA workers slept on cots in bus depots so they could be first on line the next morning to ask for permission to take Thanksgiving off.
Such accumulated humiliations fuel much of the fury leading up to Tuesday's threatened strike. Train operators complain about the fear of driving through tunnels filled with debris; female workers recently went public with descriptions of the rusted, filthy, freezing bathrooms provided for them.
None of that got mentioned at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's news conference at the Grand Hyatt on Friday when talks broke down. Peter Kalikow, the MTA chairman, flanked by Executive Director Katherine Lapp and labor negotiator Gary Dellaverson, declared the talks at an impasse and earnestly pleaded that there was no more money to put on the table.
Unfortunately, Kalikow and the MTA have long since thrown away their credibility. The agency lost $300 million to fraud and cost overruns at its own headquarters, leading Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to tell my colleague Michael Goodwin, "Of all the authorities, the MTA is the most mismanaged, least competent one out there, and everybody knows it." That's putting it mildly. This is the agency that Controller Alan Hevesi found kept two sets of books - one for the public, and the real numbers. The same place that claimed a deficit, then a small surplus, and then a billion-dollar surplus - which the MTA voted to spend down last week even as the strike deadline approached.
So when Dellaverson told reporters that "the bucket is full" and that no more money could be offered to workers, it was almost comical. A reporter asked how much money it would take to meet the union's supposedly unreasonable demands, Dellaverson waffled.
"I have a spreadsheet upstairs," he said. "I haven't run it."
Uh-huh.
Roger Toussaint and his transit workers have every reason to be furious with the MTA. When Toussaint speaks of the current labor negotiations as part of a "glorious struggle," he was talking about preserving a city where his members, men like Kenneth Hoyt, could succeed by landing a good union job.
Born and bred in Brooklyn, Hoyt has been a subway conductor for 34 years. The job enabled him to raise five children - three sons, who all joined the Army, and two daughters, who are close to graduating from New York Technical College and Kingsborough Community College.
Hoyt was doing platform patrol during the Friday afternoon rush on the uptown Lexington Ave. line at Grand Central Station, four stories beneath the press room where Kalikow and Dellaverson were crying broke.
Gliding back and forth between arriving local and express trains, Hoyt spent hours multitasking - giving directions to lost travelers, shepherding riders on and off the trains with a booming, friendly voice, giving the all-clear signal with a flashlight, and exchanging five-second pleasantries with conductors on most trains.
Several riders stopped to ask about the strike, and Hoyt - long before the news hit the airwaves - predicted the trains would stop running Tuesday. "The executive board of the union is not going to give in. I hope they don't."
Me neither.
Originally published on December 18, 2005
www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/375722p-319283c.html
The great and growing disconnect between white-collar and blue-collar workers in our town makes it hard for office workers to see, understand or respect what is at stake in this labor standoff. Few riders know, for instance, that transit workers have to ask for a day off 30 days in advance. Back in October, in an annual ritual, some MTA workers slept on cots in bus depots so they could be first on line the next morning to ask for permission to take Thanksgiving off.
Such accumulated humiliations fuel much of the fury leading up to Tuesday's threatened strike. Train operators complain about the fear of driving through tunnels filled with debris; female workers recently went public with descriptions of the rusted, filthy, freezing bathrooms provided for them.
None of that got mentioned at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's news conference at the Grand Hyatt on Friday when talks broke down. Peter Kalikow, the MTA chairman, flanked by Executive Director Katherine Lapp and labor negotiator Gary Dellaverson, declared the talks at an impasse and earnestly pleaded that there was no more money to put on the table.
Unfortunately, Kalikow and the MTA have long since thrown away their credibility. The agency lost $300 million to fraud and cost overruns at its own headquarters, leading Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to tell my colleague Michael Goodwin, "Of all the authorities, the MTA is the most mismanaged, least competent one out there, and everybody knows it." That's putting it mildly. This is the agency that Controller Alan Hevesi found kept two sets of books - one for the public, and the real numbers. The same place that claimed a deficit, then a small surplus, and then a billion-dollar surplus - which the MTA voted to spend down last week even as the strike deadline approached.
So when Dellaverson told reporters that "the bucket is full" and that no more money could be offered to workers, it was almost comical. A reporter asked how much money it would take to meet the union's supposedly unreasonable demands, Dellaverson waffled.
"I have a spreadsheet upstairs," he said. "I haven't run it."
Uh-huh.
Roger Toussaint and his transit workers have every reason to be furious with the MTA. When Toussaint speaks of the current labor negotiations as part of a "glorious struggle," he was talking about preserving a city where his members, men like Kenneth Hoyt, could succeed by landing a good union job.
Born and bred in Brooklyn, Hoyt has been a subway conductor for 34 years. The job enabled him to raise five children - three sons, who all joined the Army, and two daughters, who are close to graduating from New York Technical College and Kingsborough Community College.
Hoyt was doing platform patrol during the Friday afternoon rush on the uptown Lexington Ave. line at Grand Central Station, four stories beneath the press room where Kalikow and Dellaverson were crying broke.
Gliding back and forth between arriving local and express trains, Hoyt spent hours multitasking - giving directions to lost travelers, shepherding riders on and off the trains with a booming, friendly voice, giving the all-clear signal with a flashlight, and exchanging five-second pleasantries with conductors on most trains.
Several riders stopped to ask about the strike, and Hoyt - long before the news hit the airwaves - predicted the trains would stop running Tuesday. "The executive board of the union is not going to give in. I hope they don't."
Me neither.
Originally published on December 18, 2005
www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/375722p-319283c.html
