Cue Merrie Melodies Closing Title And Fade Out!

The transit strike comes to a merciful end as arbitrators award workers with substantively the same deal they rejected:

Ending a marathon contract dispute that included an illegal 60-hour transit strike, an arbitration panel ruled yesterday that the city’s subway and bus workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must abide by essentially the same deal that the two sides approved almost a year ago.

The bitter and sometimes bizarre labor dispute went to arbitration earlier this year, after the transit workers first voted to reject the post-strike settlement, then voted to approve it, only to have the transportation authority repudiate the deal altogether.

Seeking to restore some amity and peace between the feuding parties, the arbitration panel wrote that the best way to resolve the impasse was to award a contract that was as close to identical as possible to what the two sides agreed to last December, just days after the first transit strike since 1980.

The arbitration ruling came the same day that Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union and the man who led last December’s strike, was declared the winner in a hotly contested election, giving him a third three-year term. With some votes still uncounted, union officials said that Mr. Toussaint would win with slightly less than 50 percent of the vote. His failure to secure a majority indicated the level of dissatisfaction among union members over the strike and its muddled aftermath. He had faced a tough challenge from Barry Roberts, a union vice president, and three other opponents.

The three-person arbitration panel called for a raise averaging 3.5 percent a year for three years. It also called for the reimbursement of $130 million to some 20,000 transit workers who had paid too much into the pension fund. That last provision in the original deal drew strong criticism from Gov. George E. Pataki.

The arbitration ruling, like the original deal, will also require the transit workers to pay 1.5 percent of their wages as premiums for health insurance. That was the provision that most angered the union’s members, causing them to vote down the settlement at first. It also helped fuel broader opposition in the union to Mr. Toussaint.

The arbitration decision is binding on the two sides, and in effect sets the terms for a new 37-month contract that runs retroactively from Dec. 16, 2005, until Jan. 15, 2009.