New York on Tuesday was facing a busy pre-Christmas shopping day with no subway or bus services after transit workers voted to go on strike, an action mayor Michael Bloomberg called ”illegal and morally reprehensible”.
”For their own selfish reasons, the TWU [Transport Workers’ Union] has decided that their demands are more important than the law, the city and the people they serve,” the billionaire mayor said on television early on Tuesday.
TWU leaders earlier rejected the latest contract offer by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and voted to go on strike, in open defiance of a state law banning strikes by public workers.
Bloomberg said he will request a judge to take appropriate action.
”We will seek to show that the TWU is in contempt … and ask the court to impose severe fines on the union and its members.”
The mayor said TWU leader Rober Toussaint, who earlier announced the decision to strike, ”and the TWU have taken the illegal and morally reprehensible action of ordering a citywide strike of our mass transit system”.
Negotiations between the 33 700-strong TWU and the MTA reached breaking point on several occasions, but a Friday deadline for a strike was pushed back to Monday, as both sides wanted to avert a strike some officials say could cost the city $400-million a day.
The talks on pay, pensions and health insurance face a major hurdle in the MTA’s insistence that the retirement age be increased to 62 years from the current 55.
More than seven million residents of this sprawling city will have to find alternate means of transportation, as special measures will go into effect under a state of emergency declared last week by Bloomberg in the event of the city’s first transit strike in 25 years.
To avoid massive traffic jams, only cars with four or more occupants will be allowed to enter certain areas of Manhattan between 5am and 11am.
And in the evening rush hour, all lanes of bridges and tunnels will be open exclusively to vehicles leaving Manhattan. Taxis will be permitted to pick up more than one passenger at a time.
”Rush hour will begin in a few hours,” Bloomberg told New Yorkers on a cold Tuesday morning.
”I will join New Yorkers going to work by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to lower Manhattan,” he said, imploring city residents to be ”patient, considerate and resilient” during the strike.
”Let’s show our determination, by walking, cycling or carpooling to get to work … We will show that the city of New York works even when our buses and our subways don’t,” the mayor said. ”I have no doubt that by working together we can and will get through this.”
An 11-day public transport strike in 1980 cost the city’s public and private sectors roughly $1-billion. — AFP
