NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed a three-year contract for its 34,000 subway and bus workers yesterday that would provide no salary increase in the first year and would tie any raises after that to productivity gains by workers, according to the New York Times.
The authority’s officials described the plan, the first formal one it has offered, as austere but necessary in difficult financial times. But even before negotiators presented it publicly yesterday, the union’s leader held a news conference to denounce the proposal as “an insult, an outrage and a provocation.”
“It certainly appears as if the M.T.A., rather than negotiate in good faith, is trying to provoke a strike,” said Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, who was elected two years ago on a platform promising a stronger contract and renewed union militancy.
Mr. Toussaint stopped short of saying that a strike was imminent, and stressed that he understood the provisions of the state’s Taylor Law, which would lead to huge fines for the union if workers walked off the job. But he described the authority’s actions at the bargaining table yesterday as reckless and said that his members, who are seeking a 24 percent salary increase over three years, would be outraged.
Asked if he believed they would support a strike, Mr. Toussaint said, “I don’t know.”
The authority’s officials said raises anywhere near what the union is seeking were completely unrealistic at a time when the city’s transit system is facing a deficit of more than $2 billion over the next two years.
“Those are very large numbers for the M.T.A.,” said Gary Dellaverson, the authority’s chief negotiator, who held a news conference after the union’s yesterday afternoon to defend his plan. He said speaking to the news media this early in negotiations was an unusual step, but one the authority decided to take because it believed that the union’s claims were distorted and should be countered.
“This is way early in the process to begin to harden positions,” Mr. Dellaverson said of the union, “but you play the cards you’re dealt.”
Mr. Toussaint said that under the union’s reading of the proposal, the authority is actually seeking a wage cut because it wants workers to begin deducting 2.3 percent of their annual salaries for pension benefits. The union and the authority agreed in 1999, during the last contract negotiation, to eliminate that deduction, part of an early retirement plan that includes a majority of workers.
The authority wants the workers’ pension contribution reinstated because stock market losses over the last few years have led to conditions that they say nullify the agreement.
Mr. Toussaint disagreed with that characterization and said the authority was simply trying to hide a wage cut in its plan. He added that he believed the M.T.A. and the city were working together to take a hard line in transit negotiations in an attempt to set a pattern of “zeros for the whole labor movement for several years going forward.”
The M.T.A.’s negotiators countered that the only way it can contemplate raises is if the union agrees to sweeping rules changes that would allow greater flexibility in how workers are assigned.
For example, under current rules, subway cleaning workers cannot be asked to replace light bulbs or do any painting, Mr. Dellaverson said. And many bus drivers cannot be transferred from borough to borough because of a complex system that developed over the years, as private bus companies were taken over by the city.
“We have inherent inefficiencies in our system, in our contract, that we have to get rid of,” Mr. Dellaverson said.
He added that he believed the authority had made “significant, important movement” in three areas of the contract — sick leave, disciplinary procedures and health coverage — where the union has repeatedly called for changes.
The authority said it would take over the troubled health coverage system to ensure that it remains solvent. It also proposed changing the sick-leave policy so that workers would be under fewer obligations to provide doctors’ notes or to otherwise justify using sick days.
And it proposed softening the disciplinary system, which union members have long complained is overly punitive and needlessly complicated. But Mr. Toussaint said he saw no improvements at all in the system under the plan and added that it appeared only to “continue to feed the disciplinary machine and keep it alive and running.”
With both sides heading back to the negotiating table for renewed talks on Dec. 11, Gov. George W. Pataki warned sternly yesterday that “a strike would be an illegal act with very grave consequences to those who break the law.”