MTA Contract Negotiations Drag On for Six Months

Read our editorial “The Significance of Strikes” here.

Since April 2026, contract negotiations have been underway between New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, which represents MTA workers.

Under the previous three year contract, which expired on May 15, 2026, MTA workers faced a reduction in real wages when adjusted for inflation since 2023.

In early July, the MTA proposed a contract that includes a 2% nominal raise for MTA workers, running behind the current annual inflation rate of 3.4% and thus constituting another decrease in real wages, increased costs for workers paying into the MTA health insurance plan and higher charges for emergency room visits, restrictions on work pick rights for employees receiving workers’ compensation, and reductions in bonuses for maintenance workers.

The proposed contract would dramatically increase the rate of exploitation of MTA workers, who are already struggling to make ends meet, according to TWU members who spoke with The Worker.

“I’m more at this job than at home,” an MTA worker said. “Got to keep up with the economy.”

Workers say that they cannot live on the MTA’s base salaries alone, forcing them to work longer hours.

“I’m pushing 112 hours per [two-week] check,” an MTA bus driver said. “If you’re not doing overtime, you’re screwed, screwed.”

TWU Local 100 President John V. Chiarello condemned the proposed contract in a recorded statement in July, claiming the union is “at war” with the MTA over its terms:

“For those of you who are asking for a contract, the reason why we don’t have one is because the MTA keeps offering us unacceptable garbage,” Chiarello said. “Yesterday, they gave it to us in writing. Raises below the rate of inflation and abysmal givebacks. They want to raise healthcare contribution for current members by 50% and increase total healthcare costs for new members to 10%, driving yet another wedge between the current members and the new ones. They want to increase the charge for emergency room visits and play doctor with our current prescription plans.”

Despite Chiarello’s claims that the TWU is preparing for war against MTA management, rank-and-file members who spoke with The Worker consistently stated that they had received no communication or updates about the contract fight from TWU leadership or about preparations for any strike action.

In December 2005, despite New York state law prohibiting strikes, MTA workers, led by TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, carried out a 60-hour strike and delivered an estimated $1 billion blow to the city’s revenue during the height of the holiday season. Workers won a 10.5% wage increase over three years, lifetime medical coverage, and a $131.7 million refund for workers who paid a 5.3% pension contribution.

Volunteers with The Worker spoke with MTA workers who participated in the 2005 strike. These workers supported the strike, but argued that the TWU leadership ended it too soon.

“The strike, it was good,” an MTA worker said. “[TWU] stabbed us in the back. That’s exactly what happened. The strike should have gone on longer.”

“[The TWU] sent us back after two days,” another worker said. “They accepted the deal too early; we wanted to keep striking.”

Workers also criticized TWU leadership for refusing to initiate a strike in the two decades since.

“If [the union] really represented us, we would have a strike every three years,” an MTA worker said.

“The only way is to strike, ain’t no other way,” another MTA worker said. “You gotta strike to make your voice known, otherwise the union is going to keep taking shitty deals.”

The Worker spoke to MTA workers about their working conditions and demands for the ongoing contract negotiations. MTA workers mainly expressed concerns about the pension plan tier system, workers’ safety issues, and poor air quality at the East NY Bus Depot.

Pension Plan

Under the Taylor Law—the New York state law prohibiting public sector workers from striking—state legislation, not contract negotiations, determines the pension plan for MTA workers. This way, monopolists and their government representatives try to move the pension fight off the shop floor and into the sphere of lobbying and other forms of parliamentary cretinism.

In spite of the Taylor Law’s prohibition on determining pensions through collective bargaining, the 2005 strike blocked a proposed 300% increase in member contributions to the MTA pension fund. Although it was halted temporarily, the proposed increase was later implemented in 2012 through the establishment of Tier 6 introduced by former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The pension reform operates within the tier system—which stratifies NYC public workers’ benefits by seniority, including those at the MTA. While MTA workers employed before April 1, 2012, are covered by the Tier 4 pension plan, all MTA workers hired after the Pension Reform took effect are covered by the Tier 6 pension plan. Under the Tier 6 plan, overtime compensation can contribute to MTA workers’ pension pay rate calculation, but only up to $21,589 per year.

“Our pension don’t even cover basic costs,” an MTA worker covered by the Tier 6 plan said. “I’m looking at $2,800 a month after 30 years on the job. That’s all you get.”

Some workers contend that union leadership is failing to defend rank-and-file interests.

“The union leadership is all in a different Tier,” another MTA worker said. “They’re selling us out.”

Workers’ Safety

MTA workers who spoke with The Worker also raised concerns about dangerous working conditions.

In 2025, a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) investigation found that track worker injuries from 2021-2023 occurred at a rate 3.4 times higher than in the preceding eight years. For the past six months with recorded data, an average of 80 MTA bus drivers have been injured each month. In September 2026, MTA track worker Moet McCullum was killed on the job after being struck by a train.

Workers say the MTA continuously disregards safety protocols. An MTA transit cleaner told The Worker that a 62-year-old cleaner had to be carried out on a stretcher after suffering heat stress at the South Ferry subway terminal during a heat wave in July. According to the transit cleaner, protocol requires terminal temperatures to stay below 83 degrees—yet his thermometer read 103 degrees at the South Ferry terminal that day.

“We have to clean feces and blood,” an MTA transit cleaner said to The Worker. “They’re supposed to give us hazmat suits and gloves… when I ask, [management] says that the train isn’t at the station long enough to provide that…Someone was stabbed by a used needle when he was cleaning.”

Workers told The Worker that MTA often disputes workers’ compensation claims by injured workers, dragging out the process and delaying payments.

“Lawyers, paperwork, lawyers, paperwork and we’ll get back to you,” one worker said. “Your grandkids will collect it; you’ll be dead before you collect.”

In July 2025, more than 3,500 transit workers had their workers’ compensation checks delayed for weeks because of MTA’s negligence in transitioning claims management to a private firm, according to the union.

MTA mechanics face health risks from poor air quality at the East New York bus depot.

“It does affect your health in that your breathing is restricted,” an MTA mechanic told The Worker. “That’s why we always come outside, get some fresh air… People complain but [management] don’t do anything—since I’ve been at this depot [14 years], they probably come once saying they were cleaning, and I ain’t see no difference… sometimes black stuff falls from the vents and all that.”

The bus depot lacks proper ventilation. “There’s no windows, we only have the front door,” a mechanic told The Worker. “All the fumes from the buses… you get all of that.”

Years of documented findings back the East New York bus depot’s reputation for poor air quality. Emails from MTA officials show that they found asbestos in the boiler room in 2017. In 2019, workers found asbestos-laced cloth in nearly all of the depot’s air vents.

Rank-and-File MTA Workers Must Take Matters Into Their Own Hands

Over the past 25 years, MTA workers have seen their wages and benefits decline, their safety disregarded, and their health jeopardized by the company’s neglect. Now the MTA has tried to impose yet another contract that slashes wages and benefits, and, according to workers’ accounts, the TWU union bureaucracy has failed to take action, allowing negotiations to stall for months.

With the 2005 wildcat strike under Roger Toussaint’s leadership, MTA workers proved that despite the Taylor Law’s legal restrictions, they could take a stand to win their demands. Since then, TWU leadership has refused to authorize a strike for decades as the MTA has worsened conditions.

MTA workers are at a strategic juncture to withhold their labor during the winter holiday season as tourism booms in the city, but the conditions for breaking the Taylor Law deadlock and the inactivity of the leadership won’t come about of themselves.

To do this, the MTA rank-and-file must link with the class conscious workers and revolutionaries, and organize to put pressure on the TWU bureaucracy to prepare the conditions for a strike. These tasks will require a core of revolutionaries and class conscious workers among the MTA rank-and-file that can lead the efforts to push the struggle past its current limits. In the course of this struggle, the positive example of the 2005 MTA strike as an act of defiance against the Taylor Law should be raised and its limitations learned from.

In doing so, the workers will have to fight on two fronts, forcing the TWU officers to uphold the struggle while also combating the company. The class conscious worker and revolutionary brings to the fight the knowledge that, as The Worker has previously written, “The reform is… a byproduct of class struggle, and not… proof that the employers have a heart or have gained ‘respect’ for the working people, but… with enough force they will come off it, and with enough force they will come off the whole apparatus and the workers who can smash it will conquer and defend political power with a new state and a new social system.”

Image: A Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus, 2024. Credit: S5A-0043, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

---

The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today: