TWU Local 100 Defeats MTA in Court Battle Over Arbitraion Awarded Contract.

Judge Peter Sherwood of the supreme court of NY state has upheld TWU/MTA arbitration awards and the MTA’s petition to vacate the awards. This means the MTA is running of options in stopping transit workers from getting the fare increases they deserve.

The MTA and the Mayor went to court to hold up the arbitration award in order to continue to punish transit workers for the 2005 strike .The MTA's case was weak to begin with at the court hearings in November the MTA lawyers only attacked two provisions in the arbitration decision one was giving transit workers 3% in 2011 the last year of the contract and the other was the capping of the 1.5% health care payments. The reason the MTA did not attack the 4% raises in 2009 and 2010 is the arbitration agreement calls for these 4% raises in 2009 and 2010 to be staggered so that the MTA would have the ability within there budget to pay transit workers the same 4% raises as other public sector workers where given.This also means however , where as transit workers where given the same 4% raises as other NYC public sector workers actual take home pay for TWU members would only be around 2.5% for 2009 and 2010.

The ironic part is TWU Local 100 members would have gotten a 3.5% wage increase in 2011 but wages where cut by a half percent to pay for the capping of the 1.5% health care tax. The TBOU independent research team has obtain documents which show that TWU members paid almost 57 million dollars to the MTA in 2006 and 2007 due to the 1.5% health care tax. In 2008 alone the 1.5% health care tax cost transit workers $32,575,236.28. Records for 2009 are incomplete but for the first half of the 2009 transit workers have already given the MTA over 20 million dollars due the 1.5% health care tax. So where as capping the 1.5% is nice transit workers should keep in mind two things one is they paid for the capping of the 1.5% with a wage reduction and two the 1.5% was clearly stated to be for retirement health care benefits in the 2006 MOU. To stay informed visit www.tbou.org daily.