Twitter is awash this morning in retweet's of the MTA's post regarding negotiations with LIRR unions, tagged #strikeadeal.
What commuters and members of the public don't know is that the MTA doesn't want a deal. If it did it would have made one years ago. Or perhaps just this spring when the Whitehouse intervened for the second time to tell the MTA: What unions are asking for is reasonable.
The gist of what the unions are asking for, and what the specially organized Presidential Executive Board (PEB) deemed reasonable, was a legit raise for the first time in more than a decade. A decade.
By letting negotiations falter again and again, the MTA forced the PEB to get involved and spend a bucket of taxpayer money to do it. That's taxes paid for by you and me. By riders and union members alike. Even by those at the helm of the transit authority.
