1,000s Of NYC Transit Workers Rally Demanding That Binding Arbitration Contract Be Honored

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/12062

Submitted by Doug Cunningham on September 29, 2009 - 3:30pm

By Doug Cunningham

: “If an arbitrator’s decision is handed down, obey it. That’s what we’re lookin’ for the transit authority to do.”

About five thousand New York City transit workers rallied Tuesday demanding that the city’s transit authority honor an arbitrator’s decision on a new contract for roughly 38,000 Transport Workers Union Local 100 members. Instead of honoring what was supposed to be a binding arbitrator’s decision for the workers, though, the mass transit authority went to court to block it. From the rally in New York City Tuesday Michael Morales, an Executive Board member of Local 100, says this NO Contract, No Peace stance is not just Local 100’s fight.

: “This isn’t just Local 100’s fight. A number of locals out here in support because they understand that this is a labor issue. Local 100 happens to be the tip of the spear in this fight. If they break this local, they’ve broken labor. And that’s what our members of all unions need to understand – and even non-union workers need to understand this – that this is nothing more than an attack against labor.”

Local 100 went on strike in 2005 and the union was fined for striking in violation of New York’s Taylor law. Binding arbitration was supposed to avoid that kind of confrontation over the terms of a new contract. The union and New York City’s Mass Transit Authority are now in court as the binding arbitration contract decision is challenged.