He was excoriated on tabloid front pages and by the mayor and governor. As thousands streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge on a frigid night during last week's transit strike, someone in a car yelled out his name, prefacing it with a curse.þþBut now, a day after details of an agreement between the transit workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were spelled out, Roger Toussaint, the union's president, seems to have emerged in a far better position than seemed likely just a few days ago. þþMr. Toussaint, whose back appeared to be against the wall last week, can boast of a tentative 37-month contract that meets most of his goals, including raises above the inflation rate and no concessions on pensions. Indeed, several fiscal and labor experts said yesterday that Mr. Toussaint and his union appeared to have bested the transit authority in their contract dispute. þþThe authority did not come away empty-handed, however, as it obtained a major concession: For the first time, the 33,700 transit workers will pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.þþBut if there is a real winner in the walkout that hobbled the city at the height of the holiday season, it is the union members who went out on strike, and the man who led them.þþÿIt's a good contract for the union in that it does keep in place, for the most part, benefits that are extremely favorable to them,ÿ said Steven Malanga, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, who called last week for firing the strikers. ÿFor them, you can say this is a great deal.ÿþþWhen Mr. Toussaint appeared before television cameras at 11 p.m. on Tuesday to announce the settlement, he commented little except to read an impressive list of new worker-friendly provisions: raises averaging 3.5 percent a year, the creation of paid maternity leave, a far better health plan for retirees, a much-improved disability plan, the adoption of Martin Luther King's Birthday as a paid holiday, and increased ÿassault payÿ for bus drivers and train operators who are attacked by passengers. þþThen Mr. Toussaint announced a big surprise: Some 22,000 workers will each receive thousands of dollars in reimbursements for what are considered excess pension contributions; for several years, these workers paid more toward their pensions than other workers. For those workers, that money will easily offset the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most of them face for taking part in the illegal strike. The union itself could still face a $3 million fine that a judge ordered because of the 60-hour strike. þþÿThe union did especially well, all things considered,ÿ said David L. Gregory, a labor relations expert at St. John's University. ÿToussaint got everything he needed, and he also got what he needed in terms of the bigger picture. With the strike, he mollified the radical left in his union and helped placate the middle of his rank and file who were demanding to be treated with dignity and respect.ÿþþAll this is not to say that the transportation authority did not achieve some of its major goals. By getting the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, to agree to have subway and bus workers pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health premiums, the authority took an important step to rein in soaring benefit costs. That provision is expected to save the authority $32 million a year. Not only that, the union agreed that its workers' contribution toward their health premiums might increase if the authority's health costs continued to climb.þþAt first glance, the authority seems to have embarrassed itself over pensions, the issue for which it appeared to draw its firmest line in the sand. þþTo bring its fast-rising pension costs down to earth, the authority first pushed to raise the retirement age for future employees, to 62 from 55, and then demanded that future workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions. Finally, after Mr. Toussaint said he would never sell out the union's ÿunborn,ÿ the authority pulled its pension demand off the table - a move that state mediators proposed to persuade the union to end its walkout. þþOnce the deal was announced it immediately became clear that the authority had not only scrapped its pension demands, but also agreed to a pension reimbursement that union officials say will put more than $150 million in workers' pockets. (That amount will come out of the pension funds, but the cost to the authority could be as low as $12 million if actuaries conclude that the pension plans remain adequately financed.) þþ
Source: NY Times
