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Angry rhetoric and big fines on first day of strike

BY RAY SANCHEZ, HERBERT LOWE, ANTHONY DESTEFANO, MELANIE LEFKOWITZ, KATIE THOMAS, DAN JANISON, MATT FRIEDMAN, LINDSAY FABER, AND GRAHAM RAYMAN. | STAFF WRITERS

9:51 AM EST, December 21, 2005

The New York City transit strike entered its second day Wednesday as lawyers for the city and state looked to the courts to dole out more punishment against union leaders, and commuters piled into cabs and walked the streets in the blistering cold.

New Yorkers were out before sunrise on Day Two of the strike, hoping to avoid the long lines and crushing crowds that formed at commuter rail stations during rush hour Tuesday. Outside Penn Station, a line of taxis were ready to pick up passengers around 7 a.m.

"A nightmare, disorganized, especially going home," Aleksandra Radakovic said Wednesday morning in describing her commute.

The two sides were scheduled to meet with a mediator again Wednesday while lawyers return to court, a day after a judge imposed a huge fine against the Transport Workers Union -- $1 million for each day of the strike.

Lawyers were due back in court Wednesday.

State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones has yet to rule on whether a second union, the Amalgamated Transit Union, will also be fined. The union has two chapters in New York that have joined the strike with the TWU.

Also undecided is whether the individual officers of the two unions will be fined for supporting the strike. Officials, including TWU Local 100 head Roger Toussaint, could be fined up to $1,000 apiece for urging union members to break the law.

The Transport Workers Union's 33,000 members already face the loss of two days pay for every day they are on strike.

Some of the strikers got an early start Wednesday, donning union placards and returning to their picket lines. Bill McRae, a bus driver since 1985, said he thought negotiations should have continued -- but he still backed the walkout.

"The union executives called for a strike, and we have to do what we have to do," McRae said on Manhattan's West Side.

As they did on the first day of the strike, throngs of pedestrians, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on Wednesday braced themselves against the 24-degree weather and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Volunteers awaited them, offering hot chocolate.

Bloomberg urged transit workers to end the strike.

"All the transit workers have to do is listen to their international (union) that's urged them to go back to work, listen to the judge who ordered them back to work, and look at their families and their own economic interests," he said. "They should go back to work. Nobody's above the law, and everyone should obey the law."

Outside Penn Station, a line of taxis were ready to pick up passengers around 7 a.m.

"It's a great day to be a cab driver," Tom Flanagan said as he entered a cab. "I'm just hoping it's over quickly."

None of Tuesday's rhetoric suggested an easy or rapid end to the crisis. At the midtown hotel where talks collapsed late Monday, state mediators met separately with Metropolitan Transportation Authority and union officials. The MTA also filed a declaration of impasse with the Public Employment Relations Board, a key step in the binding arbitration process, which would allow PERB to resolve the dispute.

Toussaint -- despite facing rebellion from some of his own members and disagreement from his parent union -- vowed to remain steady on the course he has set. Keeping primarily a low-profile, Toussaint said he is willing to return to the bargaining table, but he also accused Bloomberg of "personalizing" the dispute by "his insulting descriptions of transit workers."

For his part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the strike "morally reprehensible."

"Roger Toussaint and the TWU have shamefully decided that they don't care about the people they work for and that they have no respect for the law," he said.

Jabbing his hands at reporters, Bloomberg seemed as angry as he has been as mayor. "Nobody has ever tried to deliberately hurt the people of the city during my watch and in such an explicit way," he said. "This is just unconscionable."