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New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com TWU: 8 is enough
By PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, December 9th, 2005

Transit union leaders will call for triple eights - three straight years of approximately 8% raises - for their workers, the Daily News has learned.

The wage proposal - which would be the first by Transport Workers Union Local 100 - will be presented to the rank and file today for their approval at the Javits Center, sources told The News.

Thousands of bus and subway workers are expected to authorize their leadership to call a strike after their contract expires Thursday.

The two sides are far apart. Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have proposed a two-year deal that called for a 3% raise in the first year and even less in the second year.

Further underscoring their differences, TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint told The News he would give workers today a startling example of how the MTA allegedly treats its workers.

Lewis Moore, whom a co-worker found unconscious on a work train in the Bronx last week, could have been taken to a nearby station to the south, Toussaint said. But that maneuver, from the middle track, would have clogged subway traffic - so the train was driven seven stations to the north, Toussaint charged.

"They put service before a stricken Transit Authority worker and they wouldn't have done that to a dog," Toussaint said. "If it was a dog on the tracks, they would have stopped service ... and spent whatever time was necessary to retrieve the dog."
Moore was dead by the time the train, which carries a huge crane, arrived at the E. 180th St. station. An initial autopsy was inconclusive. It's unclear, Toussaint said, whether Moore could have been saved.

But his allegations will clearly inflame passions today.

The TA has said that, due to track configurations, the E. 180th station was the nearest depot that the work train could pull into and be safely met by an ambulance crew.
Even if Moore's co-worker might have decided to take the train north, Toussaint said the command center has the final call over train movements.

In the MTA's wage proposal, the agency would give the TWU's more than 33,000 workers a 2% raise in the second year - but only if workers reduce the number of sick days they take.

The MTA faces large deficits in future years, officials say. But it has a year-end surplus of $1 billion right now.

Meanwhile, bus drivers and subway motormen followed their safety rules to the fullest extent yesterday, slowing service. The MTA confirmed there was a spike in the number of bus drivers who called in sick but said it was not significant and wouldn't speculate on the cause.

In the next few days, transit workers are expected to turn up the heat - using protests and perhaps harsher tactics that could disrupt service. The union also may demand that the MTA reach contract agreements with bus workers from five private companies that are being folded into the newly created MTA Bus Co.