A victory for Roger Toussaint.
From the city law department:
"The TWU Local 100 has agreed to begin on June 1, 2006, paying the $2.5 million in fines assessed against it for its illegal strike at the rate of $208,333.33 per month. It has also agreed not to seek the restoration of its dues check-off for at least three months after paying the fines, and to do so only after it advises the Court of its agreement to comply with the Taylor Law, including its prohibition against strikes. All parties have agreed that the $2.5 million to be paid by the TWU will be paid to New York City. The money will be returned to the union only if it prevails on its pending appeals. In light of these agreements, the City has decided not to proceed with its lawsuit to obtain still additional damages from the union. "
In the press release, the city says, "We hope that this hefty fine and the loss of the dues check-off will warn the TWU and other unions that contemplate violating the law that the law must be obeyed, and that public employees and their unions have no right to betray the public's trust by engaging in illegal strikes."
But this clearly a win for Roger Toussaint.
He now has time to perfect a system of dues collection without deducting from members' paychecks. This alone could make the Taylor Law a lot less threatening to the Transport Workers Union and other public unions statewide. Plus payments of $208,333 a month will be somewhat managable -- especially with all the layoffs lately.
In a statement, Toussaint said:
“The order imposed by Judge Jones allows us both to stretch out the payment of Taylor Law fines over the course of 12 months and to put off suspension of our dues checkoff for a full year. We intend to use this opportunity to permanently replace dues checkoff with direct payments to the union. We will use this as a challenge to reinvent Local 100 into a union driven by one-on-one contact with our members. The Taylor Law is in dire need of reform, and we hope that the State Legislature takes the necessary and appropriate steps to protect workers from out of control bureaucracies like the MTA.”
-- Chuck Bennett
Comments (1)
The Taylor Law is so full of crap. The law claim to fame is it to protect the public from strikes. But there is a dark side of the Tayor Law. The trade off is that the Tayor Law also weaken safetly rules. The worse case where the Taylor Law cause death and injureds took place in October 15, 2003 when a Staten Island Ferry crash into a repair dock. What is lost here is that fact the city had a chance to sell the Staten Island Ferry to a private company arould 1996. The private company would have to up grade all the safetly rules that would have avoild the accident. Why did the sale of the SI ferry not take place? A City Councilman from SI was worry about the employees of the SI Ferry would go on strike and shut down the ferry service since as a private company there would be no Taylor Law. That's one of the reasons why the city tried to settle all the lawsuits agansit them since the sale failed, the problems on the SI Ferry were not fix for years until after the accident took place. And after the Taylor Law became Law, the TA was able to buy weaker subway cars. A PATH subway car is much stronger then a TA subway car.