Joe saves raises for MTA crews
Planned pay raises for MTA workers will arrive on schedule after all thanks to the COVID-19 stimulus bill signed by President Biden on Thursday.
The bill will send $6.5 billion to the cash-strapped transit agency — which MTA honchos say is enough to call off a “permanent wage freeze” that was to remain in effect until 2024 and restore a 2.5% pay raise due in May that had been negotiated with Transport Workers Union Local 100 in a contract approved last year.
“Now that Congress — under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader [Chuck] Schumer, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and the bipartisan New York delegation — has approved an additional $6.5 billion in federal aid to the MTA, we are able to implement all previously negotiated general wage increases as scheduled and move ahead with contract negotiations,” MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said in a statement.
Foye called transit workers “heroes,” but also said future labor negotiations must safeguard “the MTA’s long-term financial health.”
With the passing of the bill, the MTA has been allocated roughly $14.5 billion in pandemic relief from Congress since last year — enough to prevent draconian service cuts and thousands of layoffs.
Foye has called for a total of $16 billion in pandemic relief, which includes $1 billion to pay for what he considers delays by the feds in approving the city’s congestion pricing program that will toll cars driving south of 61st St. in Manhattan and send the revenues to the MTA.
The plan to renege on the raises — including the 2.5% bump due in may and an increase of 2.75% in 2022 for some 35,000 Local 100 members — caused outrage from union leaders. TWU International President John Samuelsen last month called MTA leaders “hypocritical gobshites,” an Irish slang word for a person with a mouth full of excrement.
Local 100 President Tony Utano said Thursday the MTA would have had the “fight of their lives on their hands” if the wage freeze held up.
“We now urge them to quickly settle contracts with the other labor organizations representing MTA employees who have gone years without a wage increase,” Utano said.
MTA employees working under expired contracts include thousands of bus operators and electrical and IT workers.