Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today praised the decision by
a Brooklyn Supreme Court justice to deny the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local
100’s request to have its “dues check-off” privilege restored. The judge found
that the union’s motion “lacked credibility” and agreed with the City’s position
that Local 100 and the other unions failed to make the requisite showing of good
faith compliance with the Public Employees Fair Employment Act – known as the
Taylor Law – as required by the court’s orders of April 19, 2006. Local 100 uses
the privilege of receiving automatic dues payments from employee paychecks as a
way to collect funds; the Taylor Law prohibits New York state public employees
from striking.
“The 2005 transit strike harmed our City at the height of
the busy holiday season,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “The decision reflects the
City’s concerns that the unions’ statements failed to guarantee that there would
never again be a transit strike against the people of this City, who depend on
mass transit to get to the jobs that feed their families and pay their
bills.”
“The judge accepted
the City’s contention that any future submissions from the unions ‘require
assurances that [they] will not engage in a future strike’ and that such
assurances state in unequivocal terms that Local 100 lacks the right to strike
against any government or to assist or participate in any such strike,” said
Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo of the New York City Law Department
, which litigated the issue. “We are extremely
gratified that the judge also required that any future submission by the union
‘come not simply from its president,’ but from ‘each individual member of the
Executive Board.’”
The City’s position was argued by Corporation
Counsel Cardozo before Justice Bruce Balter of the Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Corporation Counsel Cardozo argued – and the Court agreed – that Local 100’s
previous papers to the Court failed to assert, in no uncertain terms, that it no
longer claimed a right to strike. He also argued that the union failed to
renounce its periodic practice of engaging in illegal strikes.
Justice Balter noted in his ruling that, “The Court finds
the papers submitted by defendants in support of the motion to be patently
insufficient to support the reinstatement of its dues check off rights....” The
ruling continued, “The Court finds that the affidavit submitted by Mr. Toussaint
merely parrots the statutory language in order to comply verbatim with Justice
Jones’ order. Thus, taken as a whole, Mr. Toussaint’s statement is nothing
more than a general acknowledgement that the Taylor Law prohibits Local 100 from
striking; as such, the Court finds that the submission lacks credibility and
renders the motion inadequate.”
In the last 40 years, Local 100 has
struck three times – in 1966, 1980 and 2005 – and made frequent illegal strike
threats. On several occasions, the court has entered injunctions against
these actions. No other public union has struck, or threatened to strike,
anywhere near as frequently. Local 100’s last strike, at the height of the 2005
holiday season, prevented the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and its
related entities from providing public transportation to their approximately 7
million daily riders. In addition to Cardozo, Senior Counsel William
Fraenkel of the Law Department's Labor & Employment Law Division worked on
this case.