The 33,700-member Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 voted three days earlier to authorize strike action if no agreement is reached by expiration of the current contract on December 16 at 12:01 a.m.

The same day as the Grand Central union rally Mayor Michael Bloomberg obtained a court injunction against a strike under the Taylor Law, which bars walkouts by public employees. The city is also seeking fines of $25,000 per member and $1 million against the union on the first day of the strike. The fines would double every day.

Transit workers said they reject the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) “productivity drive” that will undermine safety, and the bosses’ call for a reduced medical and pension plan for new hires. “We can’t afford to let that happen to the new guys,” Mansoor Ganie, a subway operator with 14 years on the job, told the Militant outside the December 10 union meeting. “They would try to get rid of the pension plan next.”

The MTA is pressing for new workers to pay 2 percent of their wages toward medical coverage, and increasing from 55 to 62 the age at which workers would be able to retire with a full pension.

In exchange for union acceptance of this plan, the MTA has proposed a 27-month contract with two 3 percent raises. Many workers pointed to the MTA’s $1 billion budget surplus this year for their demand for a much larger wage increase.

The MTA is also trying to institute “broadbanding” (jobs combinations) that would result, for example, in one-person crews on some subway lines. “They’re trying to broadband everything,” said Ganie.

Daniel Bozan, a bus repairman with 25 years at the MTA, said the city had pushed through similar attacks on other unions, such as the introduction of one-person crews in the latest sanitation workers’ contract.

Carol Corr, a subway booth attendant, said the MTA “is trying to make us look bad.” She said conditions continue to get worse, both on the job—where’s there’s no place for many to eat lunch—and with raises that fail to keep up with inflation. “Now a family has to have two incomes and work overtime to make it,” she said. Corr added that if a walkout is necessary to win union demands, “That’s what we’ll have to do.”  
 
 
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