Arbitrators Rule on Deal for Transit
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: December 16, 2006
Ending a marathon contract dispute that included an illegal 60-hour transit strike, an arbitration panel ruled yesterday that the city’s subway and bus workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must abide by essentially the same deal that the two sides approved almost a year ago.
The bitter and sometimes bizarre labor dispute went to arbitration earlier this year, after the transit workers first voted to reject the post-strike settlement, then voted to approve it, only to have the transportation authority repudiate the deal altogether.
Seeking to restore some amity and peace between the feuding parties, the arbitration panel wrote that the best way to resolve the impasse was to award a contract that was as close to identical as possible to what the two sides agreed to last December, just days after the first transit strike since 1980.
The arbitration ruling came the same day that Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union and the man who led last December’s strike, was declared the winner in a hotly contested election, giving him a third three-year term. With some votes still uncounted, union officials said that Mr. Toussaint would win with slightly less than 50 percent of the vote. His failure to secure a majority indicated the level of dissatisfaction among union members over the strike and its muddled aftermath. He had faced a tough challenge from Barry Roberts, a union vice president, and three other opponents.
But basically, the Union got what they wanted, and won, while the MTA saves face.
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