Peace in Our Time
By Henry J. Stern
Friday, December 20, 2002

    Sorry to bother you again this week, but my suspicions, voiced Wednesday in No High Noon Here, were confirmed this morning, sooner than I thought.

    In today's New York Times (Dec 20), page B1, column 6, Steven Greenhouse has written an article of A1 importance. He deserves great credit for digging it up.  You can read it in your Times, buy a copy (before December 30, when the price of the daily paper goes up to $1), or, if you want instant gratification, click Greenhouse. Then print it out.  You can save the print-out if it would upset you to read it right away. It is a sad story.

    The article reveals that because of massive 28% increases in health and welfare benefits, the cost of peace, vaunted as 0-3-3 over the years, will be 4.5 percent each year. (It could be higher.) The commitment of the MTA to pay over $600 million more to its employees in the next three years makes a $2 fare almost inevitable. Keep your eyes open for the next threatened strike date, December 15, 2005, a month after the mayoral election. The intimidation of the city and state worked so well this time, it is bound to be repeated.

    What this means is that there was no real negotiation, despite the pretense of intense bargaining. Chairman Kalikow had been instructed not to take a strike, and in order to get that result, he had to give Mr. Toussaint essentially what he wanted. Unfortunately, when the MTA Board discussed the contract, Mayor Bloomberg's four representatives supported it as well as Governor Pataki's ten. (To find out how the governor's ten are chosen, a matter of modest interest, click minyan.)

    Now that the mayor has signed off on this if those disputes end up in binding arbitration before the State's Public Employee Relations Board, that board will be able to look at the TWU contract to determine comparability. After all, why should other municipal unions be penalized because they did not threaten illegal strikes? The expressed and implied warnings from the TWU, up to and after the midnight strike deadline, succeeded in extorting a $600 million settlement from the pusillanimous MTA, which was informed by the elected officials who recommended and appointed them.

    People can argue over whether this was the place for the state and city to draw the line. Strikes generally cost more than settlements. The city's reputation as a place to do business, impaired by 9/11, may be at stake. Instability promotes flight. Financially, submission may be less expensive than resistance. Pay the two dollars. You have to choose where to make a stand. Etc., etc., or as they say today, yada yada yada.

    We elect mayors and governors to make these major decisions for us. Often we vote for them because they are less objectionable to us than their opponents. Then, they decide. That’s the way the system works, and we, like Churchill, know of no better one.

    In this case, the heart is wounded by the surrender to illegal threats. The brain, mindful of the consequences of bravery, is not so certain. Time will tell which organ was right.

Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.