I get to work from home during the strike...

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Before MTA, Kalikow had a bad past with money:

quote:

Before the M.T.A., I remember Kalikow at The Post By JERRY TALLMER In late February or early March of 1988, I stood on the floor of the city room of the New York Post — then on South St., just north of the Brooklyn Bridge — and, with maybe a hundred other ink-stained (okay, computer-stained) wretches, survivors of close to a dozen near-death experiences of our beloved rag throughout the previous 10 years, listened to the new owner introduce himself. He was quite a nice-looking man, and his name was Peter Kalikow. At the last minute, when it looked like Rupert Murdoch was going to close us down, here was our savior. Ted Kennedy, a frequent recipient of Murdoch-vilification, had, in the Senate, in the middle of the night, boxed Rupert into a corner, forcing him to dispose of either the newspaper or parallel TV interests — and Murdoch was hungry for TV. At that moment of capital punishment for the ancient and honorable journal Dorothy Schiff had sold to Rupert Murdoch, along had come millionaire realtor Kalikow, out of nowhere (more exactly, out of Queens), to tender us renewed life eternal. Or so it sounded to the troops who had been rallied to the City Room to be addressed by the 45-year-old new publisher. I can only quote from memory, so I won’t use quotation marks, but the key sentences went pretty much like this: My name is Peter Kalikow, and I don’t expect to die soon, but when I do die it isn’t going to say on my tombstone: He was a man who built a lot of big buildings in Queens. It’s going to say: Peter Kalikow was the publisher of The New York Post. And The Post isn’t going to die, either; you and I are going to be here a long time, and I just want you to know that. Very inspiring. Of course we all at that moment forgot the day 10 years earlier that Rupert Murdoch had stood on the floor of that same city room and told the assembled troops: “Don’t believe anything you’ve read about me. I’m not going to change anything on this newspaper” — and the very next day, started to change everything, beginning with elimination of the folio (page number) on the back page, so nobody could tell at a glance how few pages there were. Not long after that came the total elimination from The Post of Pulitzer-Prize-winning political cartoonist Herblock, whose sardonic X-ray perceptions of good and evil Murdoch detested. To the best of my memory, Kalikow didn’t do anything like that. In fact I can’t remember anything he did editorially, one way or the other; he didn’t seem to care, or know, about such matters — the skin, blood, bones, and muscle of a newspaper. The heartbeat. I remember him walking the halls, a lean and hungry, grayish, handsome figure rather (I thought) like Jay Gatsby, always with a couple of henchmen pacing along at his shoulder — types you would some years later read about in exposés of the Kalikow-era’s “mob-linked newspaper circulation scam.” Well, if it’s going to say on Peter Kalikow’s tombstone that he was publisher of The New York Post, it will have to add in parentheses (1988-1993), because by 1993 Kalikow was gone. He left behind a debt of $4.5 million to the government in unpaid (or unforwarded) withholding taxes, and a declaration of bankruptcy — cooked up, I have always been convinced, with Murdoch. That bankruptcy ultimately enabled owner redux Murdoch to wipe out the paper’s contract with the New York Newspaper Guild, force the Post unit into a strike, break the unit, and fire all 287 Guild members — one of whom, chairperson Harry Leykis, a scrappy, ultra-loyal Post staffer for 25 years, died of a heart attack not long after. Harry, like all of us, had had many thousands of dollars in severance pay wiped out overnight, thanks to the corporate bankruptcy laws. Kalikow, who had declared personal bankruptcy two years earlier, went back to his yacht (docked at its pier on his waterfront Montauk estate), and to the vintage automobiles lining his six-car (or was it eight-car?) garage. And I don’t know what else he put his hand to. Until, lo and behold, in July 1994, Gov. George Pataki, to whose election campaign Kalikow and members of Kalikow’s family had made substantial contributions, appointed him a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On March 13, 2001, Kalikow advanced to the position of chairperson of the authority. He was, as was widely noted, almost nowhere to be seen during the nerve-wracking pre-New Year’s Eve days and nights at the Grand Hyatt four months ago when the whole city — 7 million bus and subway riders, and certainly all 34,000 transit workers — were sweating out a transit strike. But guess who did show up at the Grand Hyatt one day. Rick Nasti, a vice-president in Kalikow’s real-estate firm and one of those honchos I used to see pacing through the corridors of The Post at Kalikow’s shoulder. Rick Nasti, who had pleaded guilty in that aforementioned 1992 circulation scam and had more recently been forced to quit the M.T.A. (where Kalikow had installed him) because of questions about procurement deals there. This is the Peter S. Kalikow who sat stolidly and silently through the entire outrageous process by which this city’s transit fares have just now been jacked up by 33 percent without a public vote or, shall we say, a fare thee well; the same Peter S. Kalikow whose entire response to the state and city comptrollers’ thunderbolt charges of cooked books and double bookkeeping on the part of an M.T.A. that has “misled the public” was (to date) that Mr. Hevesi’s and Mr. Thompson’s charges are “outrageous . . . political grandstanding.” And who then said no more, except, in answer to various questions from the press (as reported by Joyce Purnick in the Times), a tight-lipped “No . . . no . . . no.”Tonight as I go home I know I’ll see at least one very old lady or very old gentleman haul herself/himself painfully up the steps of a bus and wobble a senior citizen’s MetroCard slowly into the slot on the fare box. Or I’ll see an exhausted cleaning woman from Lower Manhattan collapsed in fury on the I.R.T. on the long voyage home to the Bronx. Or a fat mama with three kids, one of them in a stroller, cramming through a subway door that’s snapping at them like a crocodile. When the fare goes up for these people (also for me), I tell you what, Mr. Kalikow. Let’s help them out. Let’s let them sail to work on your yacht. Before the M.T.A., I remember Kalikow at The Post

quote:

Kalikow’s problem, however, was not just the paper. He had two other huge losers. He’d borrowed $156 million to build the Millenium Hotel. And he had fourteen small apartment buildings between 78th and 79th streets with $90 million in loans against them. His plan was to relocate the tenants, tear the buildings down, and put up a luxury high-rise. He hadn’t figured the tenants would fight him—and win. By the time he was forced to file for bankruptcy in the summer of 1991, he owed a dozen banks more than a billion dollars. His assets, with the real-estate market in the tank, were valued somewhere around $500 million. Because he had signed several personal guarantees, his private assets were also at risk. In addition to his Fifth Avenue triplex, he owned his own jet, a twelve-acre estate in Montauk, a car collection worth more than $7 million, and the biggest yacht on the East End. “Donald Trump had essentially the same problem as Peter, with one critical difference,” says developer David Mack, a lifelong friend of Kalikow’s who has also known Trump since they were kids. “The banks felt they needed Trump’s name, that it added value to the properties. So they didn’t force him into bankruptcy. With Peter, they didn’t care.” In order to finalize his workout with the banks, Kalikow was helped with a critical infusion of more than $20 million in cash. The money came from his mother and David Mack and another developer friend named Sheldon Solow. He lost the Post, the Millenium Hotel, and the East Side property and was forced to sell most of his other buildings in a depressed market to pay off his debt. And even then, many creditors got less than twenty cents on the dollar. Though he was out from under the thumb of the banks by the beginning of 1994, Kalikow says it took until 1998 to fully restructure his company, make it “as bulletproof as possible,” and get things back on track. Today, in addition to his Fifth Avenue penthouse and Montauk estate, his primary commercial assets are 101 Park Avenue and 195 Broadway. Because of his significant equity, however, an aide puts Kalikow’s net worth between $500 million and $1 billion. “I was up as high as you can get, and then I got the shit kicked out of me,” he told me one afternoon recently. “It was personally devastating only when I thought about it. But I never focused on what the ultimate impact of failure would have been. I have this facility for deluding myself, which is a nice thing to have.” Not surprisingly, Kalikow’s dance along the edge of the abyss was a transforming experience. “I thought business was everything,” he says. “I found out it’s not.” Feature Underground Man Real-estate tycoon Peter Kalikow is rewriting his legacy by presiding over the biggest expansion of New York’s transit system in 60 years. And the Second Avenue subway is only part of the MTA chairman’s plan. From the April 5, 2004 issue of New York Magazine

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quote:

Originally posted by hitokiri see my friend thats where we have yo disagree remember what i said bout how the tailor law favors the business simply because of the fact that if the unions strike then there are penalties which means that unions can t just up an and strike like normal ppl which means that the companies have a lot more power the only protection that unions have particularly twu is to strike when its most convienient which would be around christmas time since there is a lot of revenue to be made in the city if the strikes were held during warmer weather mta wouldn t not mind the fact that the strike is on follow what im saying?

Striking around Christmas isn't good for the TWU workers, either. They're picketing in the freezing cold (anyone think it was cold this morning on their walk, think about standing in it all day).

Also, they're not exactly wealthy, which means that striking now ruins Christmas for their families. If you're an TWU member, your kids may not understand what you're striking for, but s/he will surely realize that Santa didn't come this year, making you an asshole parent.

I do get your point about how it's more of a bargaining chip, but it's pretty bad for the striking workers, as well.

hmm...so is this Strike continuing into...tomorrow (Wednesday)? anyone care to make any guesses on this? hmm if I go in tomorrow i may need to find some sort of car pool..

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July 5, 2013, my heart

The stock market is the Santa for people like Kalikow. Of which the DJIA hasn't changed drastically compared to a week ago.

Police and EMS response times have not increased so all is good. Quite unlike the doom and gloom the idiots at City Hall keep crying about.

Some students are seeing their finals being postponed.

All is clear.

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For you pre-law and law students:


Public Employment Relations Board: TWU Local 100 -v- MTA NYC Transit

STATE OF NEW YORK
PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS BOARD
----------------------------------------
In the Matter of the Application of
TRANSPORT WORKERS UNION OF GREATER NEW YORK,
LOCAL 100,
Charging Party,

For Injunctive Relief Pursuant to Civil Service Law § 209-a.4,

- against -

MTA/NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT,
Respondent.
----------------------------------------

MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF APPLICATION
FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF PURSUANT TO
CIVIL SERVICE LAW § 209-a.4

....excerpts....

FACTS

1. Background

Transport Workers Union of Greater New York, Local 100 (“the Union�? or “Local 100") is the collective bargaining representative of the operating and maintenance hourly employees who are employed by the Employer. Local 100's bargaining unit comprises approximately 34,000 employees, including subway operators and conductors, bus drivers, token booth clerks, bus and train mechanics, and track workers in New York City. The Employer is a public benefit corporation created pursuant to Article 5, Title 9 of the Public Authorities Law and is responsible for operating all of the rapid transit lines (subway and elevated railroad lines) within New York City, virtually all of the bus lines within the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island and substantial numbers of bus lines in the Borough of Queens and some bus lines in Manhattan. These lines carry more than six million passengers in the City of New York each weekday. The Employer also operates power substations, distribution facilities, subway and bus maintenance and repair shops, and garages and depots. Affidavit of Ed Watt (“Watt Aff.�?).1-3. NYCERS is a “public retirement system�? as that term is used in Civil Service Law § 201(4). The structure of the pensions provided to current members of NYCERS are specified in the New York Retirement and Social Security Law. Those terms provide that newly hired transit employees have a pension with a normal retirement age of 55. Retire. & Soc. Sec. Law § 604-b(b)(4-a)(ii). Any modification of those terms would require legislative action amending the Retirement and Social Security Law. The majority of Local 100's current members are entitled to NYCERS pensions. Watt Aff., ¶ 7.

2. The negotiations for a successor agreement

The most recent collective bargaining agreement between the Union and the Employer was effective from December 16, 2002 through December 15, 2005. Negotiations over the terms of a successor agreement began on October 14, 2005. The 2005 negotiations between Local 100 and the MTA have been difficult. The negotiations take place in the context of a reported $1 billion surplus in the MTA’s 2005 budget. However, the MTA claims that it will have a deficit by 2008. The MTA's predictions of its financial health have traditionally been remarkably unreliable. For instance, in February 2004, the MTA was projecting a $539 million deficit for 2005. In July 2004, the deficit decreased to $436 million and in November 2004, the MTA was still projecting a $116 million deficit for 2005. By February 2005 however, the MTA began to project a $76 million surplus. In July the projection for the 2005 surplus increased to $833 million. In September, Comptroller Hevesi projected a surplus of $900 million. As of October 2005, the MTA acknowledged that even this last projection was too low and that it would have a surplus of $1 billion. Watt Aff., ¶ 4.

....excerpted....

ARGUMENT

I. THE EMPLOYER HAS VIOLATED SECTION 209-a.1(d) BY INSISTING
ON ITS DEMAND FOR A NEW PENSION TIER.

It is a fundamental principle of American laborjurisprudence that a party to collective bargaining breaches its duty to bargain in good faith by insisting to impasse on a nonmandatory subject of bargaining. As the U.S. Supreme Court explained in NLRB v. Borg-Warner Corp., 356 U.S. 342 (1958), good faith does not license the employer to refuse to enter into agreements on the ground that they do not include some proposal which is not a mandatory subject of bargaining. . . . [S]uch conduct is, in substance, a refusal to bargain about the subjects that are within the scope of mandatory bargaining. Id. at 349. An employer’s insistence on a nonmandatory subject “as a condition to any agreement�? is therefore unlawful. Id.

This rule applies with equal force to bargaining under the Taylor Law, which imposes the same duty to bargain in good faith concerning terms and conditions of employment as the federal statute addressed in Borg-Warner. For example, in City of New Rochelle, 8 PERB ¶ 3071 (1975), the union alleged that the employer had “violated CSL §§ 209-a.1 . . . (d) in that . . . it improperly insisted that the clause [dealing with a nonmandatory subject of negotiations] be carried into the successor agreement.�? 8 PERB ¶ 3071 at 3124. The Board agreed that the City’s insistence on the inclusion of the clause was an improper practice. Id. at 3126. See also Madison Central School District, 22 PERB ¶ 3057 (1989). In the instant case, because the Employer’s pension demand is a prohibited subject, the Employer’s insistence on its inclusion in the collective bargaining agreement violated, and continues to violate, section 209-a.1(a) and (d).

A. The Employer’s Pension Demand Is Prohibited Under the Express Terms of the Taylor Law.

In 1973, the Taylor Law was amended to specifically exclude retirement benefits from the definition of terms and conditions of employment subject to collective bargaining. Section 201, subdivision 4, as amended, states:

The term "terms and conditions of employment" means salaries, wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment provided, however, that such term shall not include any benefits provided by or to be provided by a public retirement system, or payments to a fund or insurer to provide an income for retirees, or payment to retirees or their beneficiaries. No such retirement benefits shall be negotiated pursuant to this article, and any benefits so negotiated shall be void.

The MTA violated the Taylor Law before negotiations were at an impasse.

The (NYS) Taylor Law

As long as the TWU stands their ground in court on this injunction to the MTA they can't lose.

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Last edited by ogvh5150 on Dec-21-2005 at 03:54

Jeez . Looks like Bush needs to hurry up and finish revamping these archaic Social Security policies while he's still in office. The age was set to 55 back when people were expiring not too long after.Times have changed and people don't seem to get that. Of course, until things change, the MTA is legally in the wrong - and if not in the wrong then they certainly don't have the legal upper hand.

As far as the "boy who cried wolf" thing going on w/the MTA and their projected deficits; they're playing too many games w/the people of NY and with the TWU. NYer's don't have time for games . Whether they're gonna give them their little +$7 on their checks or not that business needs to be kept in the board room where it belongs.

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