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The News Interview: MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow

Posted on: Thursday, 27 April 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Pete Donohue, Daily News, New York

Apr. 27--Transit workers have no right to push a contract "down our throat," an irate MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow declared yesterday as verbal fireworks exploded at an agency board meeting.

Kalikow lashed out after several speakers urged the MTA board to end the labor war by formally adopting a deal that both sides signed in December after an illegal three-day strike.

The burst of anger came after some union representatives, who played leading roles in last year's strike, warned there could be "another big fight in the subways and on our buses."

The Daily News reported yesterday that some union leaders are warning that members may begin a targeted slowdown if they are forced to continue working without a contract

In a strong rebuke, Kalikow essentially said the pact negotiated in December was voided when workers rejected the deal in January by just seven votes.

But workers later approved the contract -- by a large margin -- in a recent revote.

"They have no right to push that deal, in its exact form, down our throat," Kalikow said, adding he begged Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint not to strike, just days before Christmas.

Toussaint is now serving 10 days in jail for leading the walkout -- making him a hero to many workers, but not to Kalikow.

"The sympathy that we should have ... is not for the people that violated the law, but for the people that suffered because of that -- the working people who lost paychecks because they couldn't get to work," he said.

A state board has accepted the MTA's petition to begin the binding arbitration process through which a panel would dictate the terms of a contract. Workers wouldn't have a say.

Binding arbitration would allow the MTA to get a contract without partial refunds of some workers' pension contributions.

Gov. Pataki, who controls the MTA, blasted the provision. By law, the arbitration panel cannot deal with pension issues.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign urged the board to accept the contract.

"There is only one reason I can think of for you to take the contract off the table," Russianoff said. "And it's the cheesiest of all: To protect your patron Gov. Pataki on the backs of the riding public, who will bear the months of uncertainty and further labor unrest that arbitration will surely bring."

Union vice chairman D.J. Small said the penalties imposed for the strike, including a $2.5million and the jailing of its president, should be enough to satisfy the authority.

"The MTA is piling it on," he said, adding, "You should think long and hard about mistreating 35,000 transit workers."

Another union official, Norman Winston Pou, said the MTA's actions tell workers, "Your word is no good, your promises are no good. Why do you want confusion, chaos and another big fight in the subways and on our buses?"

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Source: Daily News

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