CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

Transit workers settle

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Email Mayor Bloomberg by clicking here—shame on him for calling the hard-working transit workers thugs and criminals for defending their rights.

January 2006

Nothing is final until the members vote later this month, but the executive board of TWU Local 100 agreed on December 27 to a contract including some significant victories—raises above the inflation rate (averaging 3.5 percent per year) and no pension givebacks. For the first time the contract also includes paid maternity leave and a paid holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, plus a better retiree health plan, an improved disability plan, and increased "assault pay" for bus drivers and train operators who are attacked by passengers. The deal does involve one major concession: transit workers will now pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health premiums, which the MTA says will save it $32 million a year.

According to Ed Watt, the transit workers' secretary-treasurer, "It was impossible to get such a contract without a strike."

Click here to read a New York Times analysis of the union's victory.

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