![]() “TWU’s own press release advises that they are prepared to strike once they are released from mediation,” the Transportation Communications Union’s vice president wrote to members. In a letter to its members, another Metro-North union - Transportation Communications Union/IAM - sought to calm its own members down, since a legal TWU strike would prompt other unions to face picket lines they would likely honor, or a lockout by Metro-North. The timeline suggests a strike may not be possible during the coming 2024 election year.īut that hasn’t stopped strike talk or confusion. ![]() Metro-North and TWU started mediation earlier this year and have had only two sessions. In dueling memos obtained by POLITICO, the union wants to be released now, while the MTA points out that the three-member board, which is appointed by the president, usually holds on to cases for years. The cooling-off period can’t begin until the union is released from mediation by the National Mediation Board. ![]() “The notion that there’s going to be a strike this year is just not true,” Catherine Rinaldi, the president of Metro-North, said recently. The MTA did not comment on that element of the negotiations but points out a strike cannot happen until nine months after a formal cooling-off period is triggered. “He’s willing to risk the shutdown of Metro-North based on his unsophisticated analysis of Washington, D.C.,” Samuelson said of Lieber. ![]() But, Samuelson said, things are different now - 2024 is an election year and the president needs labor. He reckons that Lieber thinks President Joe Biden will have his back, given how Biden was viewed as siding with freight rail companies last year to avert a union strike. Samuelson - who also sits on the MTA board - called the agency an “institutionally depraved entity” that couldn’t be trusted. The union argues its Metro-North workers are not getting the same economic package that MTA’s subway workers received and that the MTA is asking for loose language in the contract that would allow the agency to unilaterally reopen the contract. Samuelsen said other workers, including engineers, would not cross its picket lines. TWU has launched an ad campaign attacking the head of MTA, Janno Lieber, and has threatened a walkout and a strike. Perhaps the most bitter transit labor dispute now is one Samuelsen is leading on behalf of 600 car inspectors, coach cleaners and mechanics who work for Metro-North, the commuter rail system operated by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority that connects New York City, the Hudson Valley and parts of Connecticut. So far, transit agencies are focused on tempering strike talk by pointing out that no legal job action can happen until well into next year because of elaborate and time-consuming cooling-off periods railroad unions must go through first. “There has not been a substantial enough recognition of what happened during Covid,” said John Samuelsen, the international president of Transportation Workers of America, which represents 140,000 transportation workers. Many of the commuter rail unions argue they worked through the pandemic - literally keeping the trains running - and their heroism is not being rewarded with higher wages. The talk comes amid a spring and summer of strikes in other industries - from actors and writers in Hollywood to nurses, doctors and professors in New York and New Jersey, with threats of more to come from New York City school bus drivers.
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