The New York Times, December 19, 2005, Monday

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

December 19, 2005 Monday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 4

HEADLINE: At Center of City's Transit Talks, a Trend That Tests Union Loyalty to Future Hires

BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

BODY:
In the showdown over a transit contract, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has sought to give the city's 33,700 subway and bus workers a stark choice: Protect your own wallets or protect the wallets of future transit workers.
The authority has essentially pitted today's transit workers against those of tomorrow, explicitly warning current workers that they face sizable fines if they go on strike in a dispute over the authority's demands to reduce pension and health benefits for future workers. State law bars walkouts by public employees.
With its contract demands, the authority has joined a trend in which many corporations and government bodies across the nation have demanded reduced wages and benefits for future employees in what is often called a two-tier contract. Employers see this as a win-win strategy: It reduces their long-term labor costs, and union members are theoretically more willing to accept such concessions because the cost-cutting hits not them, but someone else.
Eager to avert a transit strike threatened for tomorrow morning, Peter S. Kalikow, the authority's chairman, has sought to rally transit workers behind his strategy, saying, ''I must reiterate that no existing M.T.A. employee will have their health care or pension affected by one penny.''
Some authority officials have talked of a darker side to Mr. Kalikow's message. In this age of rising fares and rising deficits -- notwithstanding the authority's surplus this year -- the authority can no longer be as generous, it says, and the workers of tomorrow must lower their sights on wages and benefits. The authority's proposals would raise the retirement age to 62, up from age 55 for most current workers, and would require future employees to pay 1 percent of their wages toward health premiums. Current workers pay no premiums.
In labor disputes involving supermarket workers in California, auto parts workers in Detroit and municipal workers in New York City, unions have accepted such two-tier contracts, with members concluding that it is better to have future workers socked than to be socked themselves. For instance, last year New York's largest municipal union, District Council 37, accepted a contract that gives fewer vacation days to new workers.
Even though many other union leaders have found such proposals palatable, Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, has dug in against them. He has vowed not to bequeath future generations of workers an inferior contract and worse standard of living.
''We will not sell out the unborn,'' Mr. Toussaint said.
In articulating that message, Mr. Toussaint is being loyal to a fundamental aspect of labor solidarity: You don't sell out other workers to make life easier for yourself.
''We believe that future generations of transit workers should be better off than us, just as we are better off than past generations of transit workers,'' he said.
Mr. Toussaint also realizes that assenting to a two-tier contract can create huge internal feuding in 5, 10, 15 years.
''Accepting a two-tier contract may be a short-term expedient, but it creates problems for the union in the long term,'' said Richard W. Hurd, a labor relations professor at Cornell University. ''They end up with members working side by side with different benefits. It creates some tensions, and the workers in the lower tier are always pushing for parity.''
Bob Williams, a transit worker for 25 years who inspects subway cars in Jamaica, said he was willing to risk hurting his wallet in a strike aimed at protecting future workers.
''I'm against what the M.T.A. is doing because then they're going to do it to the next batch going down the road, and it gets worse,'' he said. ''It's degrading. And if you hurt those guys now, then I'm going to get hurt later because they might be angry and cut our benefits when we retire.''
But Bruce Hinton, a token booth clerk at the West Fourth Street station, said it was not worth striking over pensions for future workers. ''I don't think that's a reason to strike, that new workers won't get things that current workers have,'' he said. ''Times change. I didn't have certain perks when I joined.''
Gary J. Dellaverson, the authority's chief negotiator, says it is imperative to get pension costs under control. He said the authority's pension contributions for the transit workers would rise to $541 million next year from $145 million in 2002.
''Maintaining this level of contributions to support this level of pension benefits over the long term is unsustainable,'' Mr. Dellaverson said. But union officials counter that the contributions have soared only because the authority has left the pension plan underfinanced.
Charles M. Brecher, research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed advocacy group, said Mr. Kalikow was getting a bum rap from those who insist he is pitting current workers against future ones.
''It's the only way you can change the pension rules,'' he said. ''The only way is to create a new tier and apply it to new union members. Unions have agreed to this in the past. This is not some cruel and unusual punishment they have invented. It's the tried-and-true way.''
Courts have ruled that efforts to cut pensions for current government workers are an abrogation of contract that violates the state and federal Constitutions. That, Mr. Brecher explained, is why New York City has several pension tiers, with each one generally less generous than the previous one as the city has sought to rein in pension expenses.
A labor law professor at St. John's University, David L. Gregory, warned that if the authority was trying to divide current and future workers and create fissures in the union, ''it will only increase the animosity geometrically.''
He suggested several money-saving compromises that might satisfy the authority without creating a two-tier plan, like the wage progression accepted by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, in which new employees start at a lower salary but climb to the regular pay scale after several years. Or, he said, the authority could propose a new pension tier that is not so starkly worse than the current plan.
''No union leadership wants to be seen as abandoning those who follow them,'' Professor Gregory said. ''But as a practical matter, this may be the most palatable of all the difficult pills the union will have to swallow.''

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