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Transport unions seek right to strike
Calling the right to strike a crucial mechanism for securing fair contracts, the Transport Workers Union of America and TWU Local 100 have enlisted lawmakers in a bid to amend state law and permit work stoppages by MTA subway and bus workers.
Legislation introduced March 16 by Brooklyn Senator Jessica Ramos and Queens Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato would tweak the statute governing public workers, the so-called Taylor Law, to no longer make it illegal for them to strike.
The bill’s introduction comes two months before TWU Local 100’s current agreement runs out for its roughly 40,000 bus operators, subway conductors, track workers, station agents and other titles.
Both Ramos and Local 100’s president, Richard Davis, said having the option to strike is an essential bargaining instrument.
“This is a democracy,” Davis, the local’s secretary-treasurer until he took over for the departing Tony Utano in December, said in a statement. “Working men and women should have the right to withhold their labor so they can secure good wages and provide for their families as best as they can.”
The amendment also would apply to transit workers at the Upstate Transportation Authority, including the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority, the Capital District Transportation Authority and the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority.
The legislation would institute a negotiation process and timeline, and any sanctioned work stoppage could only take place if contract talks and mediation fail to produce an agreement over several weeks.
The legislation’s justification calls the ability to strike “a fundamental principle of workers' rights” in their pursuit of better pay and working conditions.
“I legislate for workers,” Ramos said in a statement. “When the workers of TWU came to me saying they need this tool to be able to fight for a contract that can support their families, I was more than happy to agree to champion their legislation. This adjustment will result in a strong contract for workers, which in turn will mean better service for New Yorkers.”
The MTA declined comment on the legislation.
Professor Harry Katz, the director of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said that while in his view the Taylor Law “goes too far in banning strikes for all public employees essential as well as nonessential,” the transport union’s effort is misguided given the consequences of a work stoppage in that sector.
“I think it's just extremely socially and economically disruptive if they were to go on strike,” he said.
The unions, as well as the public-transit riding public, Katz said, would be better served by binding interest arbitration to resolve long-lasting collective bargaining impasses and the retention of a ban on strike activity for workers performing essential services, such as transportation, firefighting and policing.
“I might also say, watch out what you wish for, in that I think the union believes wholeheartedly that they would benefit enormously from having the right to strike,” said Katz, who is Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining at ILR. “It’s possible that they would face an extreme public backlash. … So I'm just not so sure it's to their benefit. I know they've convinced themselves it is.”
A deterrent?
The Taylor Law, enacted in 1967 following a bitter 12-day strike in January 1966 by 30,000 Local 100 transit workers, prohibits state and municipal workers from striking but provides for mediation and arbitration to level the playing field in contract disputes.
Penalties are two days pay for every strike day and jail time for union leaders. Unions also face the possibility of losing their dues-check-off rights, a potentially crippling financial prospect and a significant deterrent.
Nonetheless, about 34,000 Local 100 workers, led by the union’s then-president, Roger Toussaint, struck for 60 hours in December 2005 following the expiration of their contract a few days before, severely hampering people’s ability to get to their jobs and back.
A judge fined the union $2.5 million — $1 million for each day on strike — and imposed a 10-day jail sentence on Toussaint, although the union leader served just four. The union’s dues collections were suspended for nearly three years.
The union also struck for 11 days in 1980, for which it was fined $1.25 million and lost check-offs for about four months.
The Taylor Law does not apply to Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and Staten Island Railway workers, who are subject to the jurisdiction of the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926, on which the recently introduced legislation is based.
“The right to strike for NYC Transit workers is a matter of equity,” TWU International’s president, John Samuelsen, a former Local 100 leader, said. “Prohibition against striking for inner city transit workers, while our suburban counterparts can legally withhold work, is grossly unfair, grossly inequitable.”
The legislation, like Local 100 before that, also notes that the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency, finds the Taylor Law overly restrictive, particularly with regard to the metropolitan transport sector, since it “does not constitute an essential service in the strict sense of the term.”
But the agency, in response to Local 100’s complaint that the Taylor Law violated human-right principles, also found that maintaining minimum subway service “to meet the minimal needs of the local communities is not an infringement of the principles of freedom of association.”
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