Talks with dockworkers at impasse
Truckers strike at LA, Long Beach ports
Bay Area governments make big electric-vehicle buy
San Francisco transit workers reach tentative deal
The San Francisco transit agency said Monday it has reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with its union, whose workers took part in a sickout that stalled the city’s famed cable cars and disrupted other services. The tentative agreement comes about four weeks after drivers called in sick after overwhelmingly rejecting a contract they said would have required them to pay more for their pension. The sickout lasted for three days.
UPDATE:
"Talks with MTA break down, and union prepares for strike" Associated Press July 15, 2014
MINEOLA, N.Y. — Unions negotiating with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Monday that talks aimed at avoiding a walkout at the nation’s largest commuter railroad had collapsed.
Anthony Simon, the workers’ chief negotiator, said the eight Long Island Rail Road unions are proceeding with strike plans.
‘‘They continue to insist the unions agree to a contract worth less than the value of the compromise recommendations of two presidential emergency boards,’’ Simon said.
Thomas Prendergast, the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said there is a wide gulf between management and unions.
He said the MTA wants to give the raises the union has sought, but added ‘‘We want to do it in a fiscally responsible way and we’re not able to get there.’’
The unions representing 5,400 workers have said they intend to strike unless an agreement is reached by Sunday.
A walkout would affect 300,000 daily riders who travel in and out of New York City from Long Island.
The MTA last week released a contingency plan that includes shuttling commuters by school bus from selected LIRR stations to subway stops in New York City, and opening several large park-and-ride parking lots, but officials concede a strike would snarl traffic throughout the region and create a commuting nightmare for millions.
Several members of New York’s congressional delegation told Prendergast in Washington last week that neither side should count on Congress to resolve the long-running contract dispute.
Representative Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat, said the breakdown in the talks was ‘‘frustrating. Both sides claim they are not as far away as it looks. I don’t know if they are playing the clock, but they can’t play with commuters. We need certainty.’’
Israel urged both sides to return to the negotiating table.
‘‘If they’re putting their eggs in the Congress basket, it’s not a very tenable basket,’’ he said.
The railroad’s unions have been working without a contract since 2010. President Obama appointed two emergency boards to help resolve the dispute, but the MTA rejected both nonbinding recommendations.
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Also see: I Been Working on the Railroad....
I can't support that union. Get back to work!
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"NYC mayor’s plan for rail strike? He’s outta here" by Jonathan Lemire | Associated Press July 17, 2014
NEW YORK — The city’s tabloid newspaper front pages next week are easy to imagine: a photo of a nightmarish traffic jam caused by a strike at the nation’s largest commuter railroad juxtaposed with a shot of Mayor Bill de Blasio sunning on an Italian beach.
Despite the potentially damaging political optics, the Democratic mayor appears set on embarking Friday on a 10-day Italian vacation in the face of a looming Long Island Rail Road strike, which if it happens Sunday could paralyze portions of the nation’s largest city. The mayor had said he would return from his trip if a crisis arose but signaled this week that he believed his team could manage without him.
Some political consultants said the trip would look bad for de Blasio.
‘‘If I were on his staff, and it looked like the strike was going to happen, I would tell him not to go,’’ said Jeanne Zaino, a political science professor at Iona College. ‘‘It’s going to look very bad, and he’s going to be hit really hard.’’
The Daily News has offered a sneak peek of what could be in store for de Blasio: Its story on Tuesday about the impending strike was accompanied by the headline ‘‘Good luck on that, I’m off to Italy.’’
The LIRR, which connects the city and Long Island and has 300,000 daily riders, is operated by a state agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, meaning the ultimate political responsibility lies with Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, but the effect in the city would be undeniable. Roads would clog, already crowded subway trains and buses would be even more packed, and businesses with fewer customers or workers showing up could lose millions of dollars.
De Blasio said Monday that he was optimistic a deal would be brokered amid a feud about pay and contributions to pension and health care plans and that the MTA’s contingency plans were ‘‘very strong’’ even as the MTA’s top spokesman said the commute for most riders would be ‘‘a nightmare.’’
The mayor downplayed the effects of a possible strike.
‘‘We benefit from the fact it’s July, and I think the amount of travel is reduced in July,’’ he said. ‘‘We benefit from the fact that a lot of people now, because of technology, can work from home.’’
Those comments appeared tone-deaf to some critics, who noted that the workers who can’t afford to take vacations or whose jobs don’t allow for telecommuting are the working- and middle-class people de Blasio pledged to support during his victorious mayoral campaign last year.
So the whole wealth inequality thing was just campaign rhetoric, 'eh?
This guy no different than the rest of the political cla$$.
‘‘It’s perhaps among one of the most irresponsible choices a leader could make,’’ said Laurence Blank, a family court lawyer who commutes on the LIRR. ‘‘God help him if there are deaths on the highway because they’re too backed up from the strike or if an emergency can’t be addressed.’’
De Blasio, his wife, and their two teenage children are planning to visit his ancestral homeland, journeying to the towns his grandparents called home, meeting local officials, and taking their first family vacation in years.
But even before the LIRR labor talks broke down, the trip, funded in part by taxpayers, raised eyebrows. De Blasio has been in office only since January, and his vacation is scheduled to last longer than those of recent mayors.
(Blog editor just shakes his head)
His predecessor, independent Michael Bloomberg, never took a full week off, though he did frequently use his personal plane to escape for long weekends in Bermuda or London. Republican Rudy Giuliani also rarely took time off and said in a radio interview Tuesday that, ‘‘The mayor has got to be present when an emergency takes place.’’
But others said they believe the criticism is unwarranted.
De Blasio’s team stressed that the heads of the city’s emergency response units will be in town and the mayor could still postpone or cut his trip short, if needed.
Being away during a crisis, particularly one that was anticipated, has been problematic for other elected officials. New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie took criticism for being at Disney World when a monster 2010 blizzard bore down on his state. Bloomberg was in Bermuda for that storm, and his city’s preparations fell woefully short.
While some observers say de Blasio would provide a psychological boost by being in the city, others note there’s never a good time for the mayor of New York to take a vacation.
‘‘Even so-called quiet days on the calendar of a mayor can burst into crisis at a moment’s notice,’’ former mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner said.
Why is the jewspaper turning to that scum for an opinion?
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He is shoveling something, all right.
Time to duck outta here.
UPDATE: Union, commuter railroad avert N.Y. strike
