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NEW YORK — Trains and buses were running on schedule this morning after the union for bus and subway workers announced at the midnight deadline that it made enough progress in contract talks to “stop the clock” and continued negotiating with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Newsday reported.

We have made sufficient progress to stop the clock,” said Ed Watt, secretary and treasurer of Transit Workers Union Local 100.

“This progress has been made primarily in the non-economic areas of dignity and respect for our members,” said Watt. “We will negotiate as long as progress is being made.”

Transport Workers Union chief Roger Toussaint and Metropolitan Transportation Authority negotiator Gary Dellaverson continued face-to-face talks into the early morning at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

They took a break from negotiations around 4 a.m. and were scheduled to resume talks later in the morning focusing on wage issues.

Toussaint, in a telephone recording at the union’s main headquarters, urged members to come out in force for a City Hall rally Monday afternoon.

“As a sign of good faith and recognizing progress in the talks,we stopped the clock. But despite this measure of good faith, management continues to insist on a zero (raise) in the first year of your contract,” Toussaint said, referring to the MTA’s salary offer.

John Samuelsen, union vice president for maintentnace of way, said: “We don’t want to do the unthinkable thing unless we have to.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was pleased that negotiations will continue and hoped that a strike will be averted, said his spokesman Ed Skyler.

The union’s 34,000 bus and subway workers had authorized Toussaint, to walk off the job if their three-year contract expired without a new deal.

The city made emergency strike preparation plans for commuters, and warned of heavy fines for striking union members under the state Taylor Law, which prohibits public-employee strikes.

The late announcement temporarily lifted the immediate threat of a crippling strike — capping a long and acrimonious day of transit talks behind closed doors and flaring partisan battles.

Throughout yesterday, with the contract negotiations going down to the wire, Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans who control the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of letting the city drift toward its first bus-and-subway strike in 22 years.

The Democrats’ objections in the tense late stages of the contract dispute echoed those of Toussaint, who complained seven hours before yesterday’s midnight deadline: “We believe that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is responsible for pushing transit workers to the brink.

“For the MTA to put zeroes on the table for all of the hard work that transit workers give to this city is unacceptable,” Toussaint added. “And since that offer, we have failed to see any serious proposal from the MTA.”

Safety and discipline issues were also open — months after the union requested that contract talks commence.

“The MTA was unresponsive,” Toussaint said, “until after the recent round of (state) elections.”

MTA officials say fiscal constraints leave them nothing left to offer for raises, that other public employees negotiate past expiration, and that any strike would be illegal. Citing what it calls a $2.7-billion deficit, the transit agency is considering a fare hike of 25 cents or 50 cents.

Among the MTA demands that began to emerge last night were: Reduced number of comp days that workers may amass. Increased copayments for medical benefits.
Scaled-in copayments for prescription drugs.
Elimination of some promotion and hiring civil service tests.

The MTA was also pushing for a regional bus system, with employees to be assigned from a single worker pool to private bus lines, the city bus lines or the suburban bus systems.

Meanwhile, amid Democrats’ accusations and fears of a work stoppage beginning as early as 12:01 this morning, Republican Gov. George Pataki and his partisan ally, Mayor Bloomberg, focused on preparations for the threatened stoppage.

“We’re in this together,” Bloomberg said.

Among the preparations: livery van drivers authorized to pick up four passengers at a time at designated stops around the city and to charge $4 a person for trips to Manhattan; ferries expanding their routes; and several locations earmarked as carpool staging areas (for example, Alley Pond and Cunningham parks), and other areas set aside for park-and-ride transfers (such as the Shea Stadium parking lot).

For those driving into the city, the minimum occupancy is four people to a car on crossings and main arteries into Manhattan, day and night.

Both the mayor and governor underscored, as they have repeatedly, the serious fiscal constraints facing the state and city.

“There is no person capable of riding in on a white horse with a bag of money to resolve this contract,” Pataki said. “It has to be resolved at the table by the MTA — which is, I know, negotiating in good faith, and the TWU.”

Near the Manhattan hotel where talks were under way came Democratic legislators’ appearances staged by Ken Sunshine, a consultant to the union who is also a frequent Democratic operative, to say the contrary.

The partisan critics took turns before the TV cameras accusing Pataki of being invisible during the negotiations.

Assemb. Roger Green (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the Black, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Legislative Caucus, said that during the campaign two months ago, “we feared we’d arrive at this kind of brinksmanship leadership.”

“I think it’s a class factor,” Green said. “I think what you have is a plutocracy disconnected from the day to day lives of people of the city of New York.” Pressed on whether he’d support a strike, Green said: “The caucus supports the notion of a conflict resolution.”

He also called for some changes in the Taylor Law, which bars strikes by public employees.

“This year, the governor went on a spending spree,” said Assemb. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan). “He spent money all through the state, and transit workers were cut out. These are people who work under terrible conditions, in rat-infested tunnels.”

The City Council choreographed another event. There, Transportation Committee Chairman John Liu (D-Flushing) said, “The MTA didn’t even put an offer on the table until 10 days before the deadline,” and its deficit estimates have been shifting and opaque.

The same claim that Pataki and Bloomberg were inviting problems was made at a rally outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel where a halting series of round-the-clock talks were taking place.

Outside, hundreds of unionized employees gathered behind police barricades, some chanting “Mike, Get Your Bike!” in defiance of Bloomberg’s pledge to cycle to work if there’s a strike.

One employee, Stanley Wistalski, bounced up and down on a children’s bike proclaiming in a “dummy” voice, “It takes time to get to the city, but we’ll get there eventually. I got my helmet on.”

“Everyone thinks it’s about the money,” added Mike Scanlan, a union shop steward. “To be honest, if we get 2 percent a year, I’m happy with that — if we get our health benefits and something’s done about discipline.”

Another steward, a nine-year MTA veteran, added: “The union made a stand, and they don’t want to back off it. The state’s ready — they want to break the union. It’s like two people trapped in a fight they can’t get out of.”

The city preparations were already incurring expenses.

Free ferries were scheduled to run from various staging areas, with extra routes added between Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, regardless of whether the workers walked out.

“We’ve had to rent barges so that the ferries can pull up at the right level,” the mayor said. “We’ve had to make commitments to ferries to provide service; same thing to bus companies. The schedules for police and fire have already been changed, and in the middle of the night, if there is a strike, they’ll be calling in their people.”