The chairman of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged Wednesday the possibility of a Long Island Rail Road strike in the summer.
"We're doing everything we can to avoid [it]. But we have to be prepared if we reach a point where it's not done," Tom Prendergast told reporters after the MTA board's monthly meeting in Midtown on Wednesday. LIRR is an MTA unit.
Two weeks ago, MTA officials rejected a proposal by the Presidential Emergency Board, a group of arbitrators appointed to settle a nearly four-year contract dispute. The board recommended 2.85% raises for six years, retroactive to 2010. The MTA said the raises would trigger fare hikes.
The Federal Railway Act calls for a two-month cooling-off period after which President Obama could appoint a second board. LIRR and Metro-North Railroad fall under that act, while the other MTA units are under the federal Taylor Law.
"We have time to ask for the [second] PEB. That doesn't mean we won't, but we're taking it very seriously," said Prendergast, who was president of New York City Transit in 1994 and oversaw contingency plans to absorb the last LIRR strike.
Anthony Simon, general chairman of the United Transportation Union, a coalition of LIRR unions, told the board that negotiations were in an "extremely fragile state." He said turnover at the top — MTA has had three chairmen the past 2-1/2 years, Jay Walder, Joseph Lhota and Prendergast — has complicated the process.
"They're not taking the negotiations seriously," said Simon. "Their stand is three net zeros and pension and health concessions, and take it or leave it."
The MTA is hinging its budget and rolling four-year financial plan on three straight years of "net-zero" budgeting, which essentially would involve trading reduced benefits and work-rules and efficiency changes to match pay raises.
Moody's assigns an A2 rating to the MTA's transportation revenue bonds, its primary credit, while Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's rate them A.
Prendergast, meanwhile, called the further delays on the East Side access project "probably closer to a complete outlier and a stand-alone." The MTA on Monday admitted that moving LIRR trains into Grand Central Terminal will cost $10.8 billion, or more than $6.5 billion above initial estimate. The new estimated completion date is 2023 instead of the original 2009.
"It's a one-off in its scope and complexity," said Prendergast. "The amount of earth that's moved is phenomenal. No other time have we done that much mining and tunneling."
