Transit Workers Union Takes Aim At MTA Chairman During Budget Talks
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The Transport Workers Union again has stepped up its very public campaign painting MTA Chairman Jay Walder as someone who is out of touch with the concerns of working New Yorkers, as behind-the-scenes budget talks between the agency and union continue. NY1's Transit reporter John Mancini filed the following report. President Samuelsen of TWU Local 100 does not really sound like a guy who is ready to make a deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In his rhetoric, he takes aim at MTA Chairman Jay Walder.
"We're going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that the Jay Walders of the world, that are multimillionaires making these decisions, that are destroying New York's working families, are held accountable," said Samuelsen.
At the same time as all this tough talk, though, union leaders have sat down with Walder's team to talk about how to help narrow the MTA budget gap.
Hundreds of bus drivers, station agents and other transit workers were laid off this year, and the union says the MTA needs to pledge there will be no more job cuts.
Mediator John Feerick, the former dean of Fordham Law School, told NY1 in a statement, "Both sides are making a genuine effort at mediation."
It is also genuinely true that the union's stepped-up barbs are not making things any cozier with Walder. They slapped his face on a banner strung across a big rat-shaped balloon when laid-off station agents handed in their gear last week.
On Thursday, they will hand out a postcard, seen above, at Times Square, which portrays Walder as being out of touch for owning a vacation home in the south of France.
The MTA would not comment on the personal attacks, or the progress of the talks.
Riders who endured service cuts this summer and must face a fare hike next year can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing who Walder is. Some commuters told NY1 that they had a decidedly mixed reaction to the TWU's postcard campaign.
"I think it exposes what's really beneath, what lies beneath the whole MTA, and I'm sure he's not the only one," said one straphanger.
"That's great that he can own a home. I don't think that it's a terrible thing," said another. "I think it's bad publicity on their part to start shouting that he's a bad person for owning a home outside of this country."
"I think that the message it gives a lot of people is that it's for some to have but not the rest," said a third. "So, 'Who are you looking out for here?' is the message I see coming out of this."
The real messages between the MTA and its largest union will likely be delivered in a far less public way, as the talks to save money, and possibly jobs, continue.