Contract Negotiations Update

This is the situation, on the four open contracts MaBSTOA, MSII, MTA Bus and Queens.

If you have been a supervisor for many years you know we never get a contract on time so what we are going through right now should be no surprise. These are not excuses they’re facts. Local 100 eliminated traditional Medicare for all retirees and this union along with all other unions have refused to do that. The elimination of Medicare by Local 100 attributed to .25% pay increase in the last year of their contract and the $1000 supplemental essential worker bonus amongst other things.

The Authority was faced with the dilemma of no other union going along with the elimination of Medicare so the Authority came back with an alternative cost savings method that was presented to the ATU’s. This took time and eventually the ATU’s agreed to the changes to the prescription drugs plan, that same offer is being made to us. The value of that cost savings needed to be thoroughly verified and that took time. On top of that we have a situation where we have debt we owe from the last contract because we refused to extend our contract by 2 months. The 2 month extension was the equivalent to what Local 100 saved the Authority due to their elevator/escalator agreement. At the same time we opened up the Aetna medical plan for everyone to move from NYSHIP to Aetna and close the NYSHIP door for future members. This had value to which will be used to pay off the debt in each contract except for MTA bus. MTA Bus did not generate enough savings with open enrollment to pay off the debt, so in that contact we have a large hill to climb.

Contract negotiations are not done on the unions timeline they’re done in conjunction with a tight Labor Relations Dept. that works at their pace own which slows everything down. And this is something all unions in the MTA struggle with.

We have a lot of work to do before we will be able to bring these contracts to you for a vote, but we will continue to hammer away until we can get great deals for all of our members. Be patient and know that we are working on your contract but the wheels of justice move slowly.

Philip Valenti, President