The agreement between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its biggest union, the Transport Workers Union, expired last Wednesday, and workers didn’t go on strike. The union’s motto used to be “no contract, no work.” So the fact that we don’t even have a work slowdown might be seen as positive news. It’s not: It shows that the union, despite incendiary rhetoric, trusts Gov. Andrew Cuomo to deliver a good deal.
One might think labor relations are acrimonious. Two weeks ago, John Samuelsen, the public face of the union even if he’s no longer officially in charge, told management amid an overtime crackdown that “any transit worker that does a lick more than they have to do for you . . . is crazy.”
Behind the scenes, things are less theatrical. The union isn’t cowed by the MTA’s $467 million budget deficit next year, doubling two years after that even with congestion-pricing revenues.
Per usual, it has presented the MTA with a list of “demands,” including unspecified raises, plus sweeteners. It wants exemption from congestion pricing on members’ commutes via a new “Universal MTA Pass” — a benefit worth a couple of thousand dollars a year apiece. It wants more people to benefit from “snow duty” overtime, plus even better health and dental: “retiree eyeglasses” and the like.
You can’t blame the TWU for asking for stuff — it has gotten it from Cuomo before.
You can blame the MTA if it goes along with business as usual — or, at most, demands small givebacks, like token savings to health care and overtime.
So what would a good contract look like, one that acknowledges that state lawmakers enacting congestion pricing was a once-in-a-generation event, and that revenues can’t be squandered on bad labor practices? (Yes, yes, the MTA will say that that revenue is earmarked for physical assets, but the way the MTA does internal track and signal work does affect how much money it has available for those investments.)
First, retiree health care. New York City Transit, the MTA division that oversees the subway and buses, will spend $505 million this year here, rising to $700 million in 2022. That is a lot of money. The increase represents almost 20 percent of the MTA budget deficit.
And it goes against progressive principles. America already has socialized medicine for people of retirement age. TWU retirees receive guaranteed pensions with which to pay for Medicare and any supplemental insurance, just as everyone in the private economy must do, but without the guaranteed pension.
Through Medicare, the US government has decided, for better or worse, that Americans should work until 65. If you want to retire before then, you are responsible for your own health care. If the TWU doesn’t like this arrangement, it’s fair to advocate for improvements for everyone — not just for its members.
Practically speaking, phasing out retiree health benefits, which can be done through contract, is a way of raising the TWU retirement age — workers with 25 years in can retire at 55 now — without having to depend on the state Legislature to do it.
Second, experiment with one-person train operation. The MTA has modernized the signals on two lines — the L and the 7 — and is doing a third, Queens Boulevard. With digital signals, the trains drive themselves.
No, New York shouldn’t leave 1,500 people alone on a packed rush-hour train. (Paris and other cities do it on smaller, less crowded trains that don’t have the same quality-of-life challenges that New York has.)
But on digitized trains, the MTA should experiment with deploying the second person differently, walking through the cars (even in plainclothes) to report egregious quality-of-life violations or mentally distressed passengers to standby response teams. There’s nothing wrong with doing this slowly, but the MTA ought to start soon, not tie its hands for another three years.
Third, rewards for TWU ideas on how to work more efficiently — and for cooperating on other automation projects. The MTA could eventually replace track inspectors and flaggers on foot with geometry trains — not to lay off workers but so they can do repair and replacement work more quickly and also keep people out of dirty, dangerous conditions. Cash bonuses for bigger-picture cooperation will yield more overtime savings than line-by-line quibbling over rules.
No deal will get done without Cuomo’s sign-off. The governor loves to talk about “transformative” infrastructure, but we can’t transform the MTA until we transform work practices.
Nicole Gelinas is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.