Believe It Or Not, Every Vote Does Count!

Transit employees rejected their new contract today by a margin of seven (!) votes:

Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, had urged members to accept the contract, hard fought after last month’s strike. But the rank and file apparently did not have faith that they were getting the best deal possible.

Mr. Toussaint said in an afternoon news conference that 11,227 members voted in favor of the new contract, while 11,234 voted against it, out of a total of 22,461 votes cast. Voting ended at noon today.

Workers are without a contract, but transit service is expected to be unaffected. Mr. Toussaint made no mention of another strike, and the vote will proably mean that negotiators for the union and the M.T.A. will go back to the bargaining table to hash out a new deal.

Mr. Toussaint blamed Gov. George E. Pataki and the leadership of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s mass transit system, for the failure of the vote.

“We believe this result is a byproduct of a number of negative and inappropriate interferences,” he said.