December 22nd Update: New York City's three-day mass transit strike ended today when union leaders, facing mounting fines and threatened jail terms, voted to return their 33,000 members to work without a new contract. Read more No agreement has yet been made about the MTA's proposal to raise contributions to the pension plan for new workers from 2 percent to 6 percent.

New York City’s 34,000 bus and subway workers defied threats of fines and imprisonment and walked off the job at 3:00 a.m. Tuesday morning December 20th. Their union, the Transport Workers Union Local 100, rejected the demands of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for sweeping concessions on pensions, health care and working conditions. This strike is the first to shut down the city’s mass transit system in 25 years.

This struggle has pitted transit workers in a direct confrontation not only with the MTA, but with the state and city governments, the Democratic and Republican parties, and New York’s ruling establishment of Wall Street financiers and corporate CEOs. It also pits them against the trade union bureaucracy. The president of Local 100’s parent union intervened after the breakdown of negations to urge that the MTA’s offer be accepted and warn that the strike would receive no support from the international union. Under New York State’s anti-labor Taylor Law, workers face the prospect of being fined two days’ pay for every day on the picket line, while threats have been made to arrest union leaders and possibly striking workers themselves for defying a court injunction.

After the walkout,the MTA Chairman said that he and the state’s attorney general would go to court immediately seeking contempt rulings. The city administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg said before the strike that it would be in court seeking additional astronomical fines of $25,000 the first day of the strike for each individual worker, to be doubled each day thereafter. The city was granted a $1 million fine against the union per day. More militant parts of the labor movement say that AFSCME union leadership, if not the AFL-CIO, should call an immediate general strike in New York City in support of the transit workers, and at the very least demand the fines be revoked. Updates on New York Indymedia

TWU Local 100 Blog | New York City transit workers defy threats and strike | New York City Transit Workers on Brink | The political issues confronting New York City transit workers | Transit dispute exposes NYC's Class Divide | NEFAC Article About the Strike | Another Opportunity To Halt The Employers’ Offensive Arises | A new stage in the class struggle | “Today’s strike is for all working people” | New York transit strikers confront escalating attacks | “Bloomberg and his friends are the thugs, not us” | Behind the media onslaught on the transit workers | Mayor denounces “selfish” transit workers | The sudden end of the New York transit strike
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