TWU LOCAL 100 RAISES ONCE AGAIN EDGE UFT'S

I respect Transport Workers Union Local 100 as they are a real union that is ready to do whatever it takes, including a work slowdown, to achieve a fair contract.  Terms were released of TWU Local 100's tentative contract that was agreed to on Wednesday and once again they beat the UFT raises for the current round of bargaining for government employees.

Here are the annual raises according to ABC 7 news:
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Details are emerging of the tentative deal after leaders of the MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 reached an agreement to avoid a strike.

The unionized workforce will get a four year contract that is retroactive to May of this year, with annual wage increases of 2%, 2.25%, 2.5%, and 2.75%.

I gather everyone who comes by here wants the comparisons between the UFT and TWU contracts.

UFT increases:
2% on February 14, 2019,
 0% on February 14, 2020
2.5% on May 14, 2020,
 3% on May 14 2021,
 0% on May 14, 2022. (Contract ends September 13, 2022)
7.5% Total for 3.58 years*

TWU increases:
2% May 2019
2.25% May 2020
2.5% May 2021
2.75% May 2022 
9.5% Total for 4 years

TWU's 9.5% > UFT's 7.5%. That's clear. However, it is a little more complicated to do a direct comparison because the UFT Contract is for 43 months (3.58 years), not 48 months (4 years) like TWU. We did the annual breakdown:

7.5% divided by 3.58 years comes to UFT annual raises of 2.09%.

9.5% divided by 4 years comes to TWU annual raises of 2.375%.

That's .285% annually more for the TWU raises. UFT loses again. It might not seem like much but over the lifetime of a career, it does adds up.

I think the numbers make it clear the TWU is a more effective union and if we add the last contract in, then this becomes a long term trend where they obtain bigger raises. Their percentage increases are larger than ours in spite of the fact that the MTA in 2019 had to use cash reserves to balance its yearly budget while our employer NYC has multi-billion dollar surpluses year after year.

It is rather obvious the main reason that TWU is getting more money for salary increases is that they are prepared as workers in a union to do whatever it takes collectively to get a better contract. NYC teachers and our union for the most part are not prepared to do anything collectively. Well, action here is to complain anonymously mainly. We need a stronger union, not a weaker one with mass defections.

All of that said, I do not believe the TWU numbers are overly impressive. Today's very strong jobs report shows that 266,000 jobs were created nationally in November and there is now a 3.5% unemployment rate. As for wage gains, this is from the Department of Labor via Yahoo Finance: "Average hourly earnings year over year: +3.1% vs. +3.0% expected and +3.2% in October."

Unions should be citing these numbers for sure when we negotiate. The Federal Reserve is pumping more money into the the markets and interest rates have been lowered to keep the economy moving. I am no economist but I do not expect a recession unless there is some kind of crisis where everything comes tumbling down again. Unless that happens, unions should be screaming for more of a share of the prosperity because we know when the house of cards/bubble or whatever you want to call it falls at some point in the future, we (not the bigshots) will be asked to absorb all of the pain.




*We did not account in the main story for the extra 3.5 months the UFT's last contract was extended to pay for retroactive raises for employees who retired between 2010 and June 2014 and Paid Parental Leave.  There were 0% raises for that 3.5 month time period. If we were to add that in, the UFT annual raises would fall to 1.94% for the 3 years,10.5 months this current contract and the extension of the last one cover. We are also not including in comparisons with the TWU in the main story the fact that we are still waiting until October 2020 for 25% of the money in back pay for work we did from 2009-2011.