NEW YORK — The morning commute began as normal today for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers as subway and bus workers showed up for work after their union agreed to negotiate with officials of the city’s transit authority through the night past a 12:01 a.m. strike deadline, reported the New York Times.
Officials with Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union postponed a threatened walkout late last night, saying that there had been progress in contract talks as the deadline neared. But the union officials declined to say how long they would continue negotiations past the deadline before deciding whether to call a strike.
“We’d like to announce that we have made sufficient progress to stop the clock,” the local’s secretary-treasurer, Ed Watt, said at a brief news conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel moments after midnight. “This progress has been made primarily in the noneconomic areas of dignity and respect for our members.”
Subway and bus workers have long complained that the M.T.A.’s disciplinary system issues far more citations each year — some 15,000 — to them than it does to workers of Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road.
There was no immediate comment from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s buses and subways.
With transit workers on the job this morning, the city did not activate its contingency plan — which included 24-hour restrictions in Manhattan on private vehicles with less than four people.
Mr. Watt’s announcement came after a sense of optimism grew during the evening, but union officials said it remained unclear that a settlement would be reached, with wages remaining one of the key stumbling blocks.
The last public statement from the president of Local 100, Roger Toussaint, came at a late-afternoon news conference at the hotel where he told reporters, “We intend to and still expect that our contract will be resolved before midnight tonight.”
But as that deadline neared without an agreement at hand, both sides agreed to push on.
Mr. Toussaint’s remarks came about an hour after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki publicly warned the union of severe penalties if it carried out its threat to walk out.
Mr. Toussaint and other union leaders and local lawmakers spent much of the weekend pressing the mayor, and especially the governor, to get involved to resolve the dispute.
Throughout the day, union leaders said little about the threatened strike even though members voted overwhelmingly last weekend to authorize their leaders to call a strike if no contract was reached by today.
Tommy McKeon, a negotiator in the union’s track maintenance department, said he was glad about the decision to stop the clock, describing the feeling among workers as increasingly positive but still tense. “I haven’t heard exactly what they were offered,” he said, “but it’s always encouraging to keep on talking.”
At the Transport Workers Union hall on the Upper West Side, where dozens of transit workers had gathered, some also expressed optimism after Mr. Watt’s brief announcement.
“For now, it’s good enough,” said Henry Williams, a signal maintainer for the last 22 years. “We’re going to be moving passengers” today. Speaking of transportation officials, he said, “I wouldn’t say they’re negotiating in good faith but better than they have been.”
“Now,” he said just before 12:30 a.m., “we’re going to go home and get some sleep.”
Earlier yesterday, one union adviser, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said one option under consideration was to delay a walkout until the middle of the week.
The union spent early yesterday putting City Council members and state legislators before television cameras to urge Mr. Pataki to use his powers to bring about a deal. But Mr. Pataki, who controls the M.T.A., which runs the city’s subways and buses, sought to avoid being drawn into the dispute, saying, “There is no person capable of riding in on a white horse with a bag of money to resolve this contract.”
The governor appeared with Mr. Bloomberg at the 4:15 p.m. news conference at the Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn, where the mayor warned New Yorkers to be prepared for a strike. “You should not go to bed assuming that you will be able to go about your business in the regular way,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
City officials spent yesterday honing their contingency plans, which include requiring most automobiles entering Manhattan to carry four passengers and allowing limousine and livery car drivers to pick up passengers who hail them. Many New Yorkers were busy arranging car pools, buying staples and oiling the chains on their bicycles to help cope with what would be the first transit strike in New York in 22 years.
At his news conference, Mr. Toussaint sought to place the blame for any walkout on the M.T.A., which runs the nation’s largest transit system, carrying more than seven million riders a day. He said it had not responded to the union’s request to begin negotiations in the spring and “resolve the contract long before the Christmas season.”
“We believe the M.T.A.’s responsible for pushing transit workers to the brink,” he said.
Mr. Toussaint said substantial gaps remained between the two sides on many issues, including wages, safety, the disciplinary system and the union’s demand that the authority help pay for prescriptions for retirees.
As for wages — the issue that many labor experts expect will be hardest to settle — he said the agency was still calling for a wage freeze in the first year of a proposed three-year accord.
“For the M.T.A. to put zeros on the table for all the hard work the transit workers give to this city is unacceptable,” said Mr. Toussaint, who was wearing a navy blue suit, having jettisoned the black leather jacket he wore on Thursday when he told the mayor to “shut up.”
A union adviser said last night that if the M.T.A. did not budge on its insistence on a first-year wage freeze, the union would definitely walk out.
The union, whose members average $44,000 year in base salary, originally sought an 8 percent raise each year for three years but later lowered its proposal to a 6 percent raise each year. Besides the wage freeze in the first year, management has called for raises in the second and third years but contingent upon the union’s agreeing to productivity increases.
The authority has also asked for many givebacks, including having workers contribute $1,000 more to their pensions each year.
With many transit workers complaining that the mayor and governor had criticized them day after day, Mr. Pataki offered some kind words yesterday. After praising the courage that many transit workers showed on Sept. 11 and in the days after, the governor said: “I have tremendous respect for the people who drive the buses and run the subways. They have shown their commitment to the people of the city of New York in the past 15 months. I hope they will show it again by not engaging in strike activity.”
Mr. Pataki urged the union not to forget that the M.T.A., the state and the city all faced large deficits, and he issued a stern warning: “There are severe penalties to engage in an illegal strike.”
Mr. Bloomberg vowed to seek damages against the union, whether or not there is a walkout. City officials, who predict the city’s economy would lose $100 million to $350 million each day of a strike, have filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million from the union on the first day of a walkout, doubling every day thereafter; $25,000 against each member, doubling each day; and $5 million for the costs it says it has incurred preparing for a threatened walkout.
“You can rest assured whether there is a strike or not, we will do a careful accounting and we will try to recoup all those expenses,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We don’t have the money to go and waste.”
The M.T.A. has obtained a court injunction ordering the union not to strike. Under the state’s Taylor Law, which bars strikes by public employees, the workers could be fined two day’s pay for each day on strike.