(The Associated Press circulated the following article on December 22.)
NEW YORK — New York commuters began Day 3 without subways and buses Thursday, and union leaders faced a court date to explain why they shouldn’t be held in criminal contempt for halting the city’s mass transit system.
As legal and financial pressures mounted on the union, State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones ordered Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint and his deputies to appear in court Thursday, warning jail time was a ”distinct possibility.”
Early Thursday, Toussaint was seen walking into the hotel where negotiators from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are staying. Negotiations had previously taken place at the hotel, but it was unclear if the two sides were talking directly.
Gov. George Pataki said Wednesday that there would be no negotiations until workers returned to their jobs.
But Toussaint suggested that the union may resume negotiations and possibly go back to work without a contract if the MTA took its current pension proposal off the table.
”Were it not for the pension piece, we would not be out on strike,” Toussaint told NY1-TV.
The contract covering 33,000 transit workers expired last week, and the union called the strike Tuesday morning despite a state law banning public employee strikes.
With state-supervised mediation talks under way Wednesday, millions of New Yorkers braved another frigid commute, streaming into commuter rail hubs, hiking over bridges and pouring into cars and cabs. Some tried to hitch a ride.
”Going downtown?” was the mantra of the moment on Broadway at West 96th Street as vehicles inched through thick traffic just after the crack of dawn. Cars with fewer than four occupants were not allowed to enter during the morning.
”Rain, sleet, snow or strike, we’ll get to work,” vowed Paul Jensen, the office manager at the Weber Shandwick public relations firm in midtown.
The judge has already imposed a $1 million-per-day fine on the union for defying an order barring the strike — a punishment that would not take effect until appeals are complete.
But in an effort to put more pressure on the union, city lawyers asked the judge to issue another order directing union members to return to work. If the order was ignored, the city could ask for fines beyond the docked-pay penalties already faced by striking workers, said Michael A. Cardozo, New York City’s corporation counsel.
The fines could range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, and would come out of the workers’ pockets, rather than union coffers.
In preparation for such an action, the city was making plans to serve legal papers on striking workers whenever they might be found, including picket lines and at their homes.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg continued to blast the union, saying the strike ”needs to end, and it needs to end right now.” He questioned how union leaders could claim the walkout would benefit the city’s working class when the strike is causing economic harm to New York.
Toussaint said he took issue with Bloomberg’s earlier remarks that the union ”thuggishly” turned its back on New York. He called the language ”undignified and unbecoming.”
”We wake up at 3 and 4 in the morning to move the trains in this town,” Toussaint said. ”That’s not the behavior of thugs and selfish people.”
A chief sticking point for the union has been the pension proposal to raise contributions to the pension plan for new workers from 2 percent to 6 percent. The union contends it is woefully inadequate and would be impossible to accept.
The judge said he was hopeful there would be a breakthrough in mediation talks overnight. Union lawyer Arthur Schwartz warned that hauling Toussaint into court would halt the talks and could make a settlement more difficult.
Bloomberg, who isn’t directly involved in the strike talks, said he didn’t think putting union leaders in jail was appropriate.
”The fines are what is going to hurt,” he said. ”Fines don’t make you a martyr and fines you don’t get back.”