Reviewing the Memorandum of Understanding that was recently initialed on M-N, some points of interest to consider are:

Article I: General Wage Increases, the final year of this contract runs from January 1 st , 2009 through June 15 th , 2010 . An extra five and a half months has been added onto the end of this contract. Two and a half of the months is to fund a portion of the Retirement Incentive.

Article II: Defined Benefit Pension Plan, as stated in item #7, All employees hired after full and final ratification of this agreement shall become members in the MTA Defined Benefit Pension Plan under a program the same as Article 12 of the MTA Defined Benefit Benefit Pension Plan as applicable to other Metro-North employees without any provisions for early retirement prior to age 62, including the retirement incentive referred to in paragraph 5 above.

And with provision that overtime earnings in excess of 20% of regular wages shall not be included in the calculation of any retirement benefit, including but not limited to death benefits.

Article III: Benefits, effective upon full and final ratification of this agreement, the existing Company paid Life Insurance benefit of $100,000 will be eliminated for all employees who become participants of the New Program and all employees hired on and after full and final ratification of this agreement.

Article IV: Work rule changes, Effective January 1, 2007, the extra Personal Day for employees with thirty (30) or more years of continues service is eliminated .

Effective 2008, the existing holiday provision will be amended, allowing Good Friday to be replaced with a Choice Holiday. The Choice Holiday will be subject to use, consistent with Metro's North's needs of service and in accordance with the notice procedures for requesting Personal Days.

Some points not covered by this agreement:

No guaranteed COLA in the MTA Defined Benefit Pension Plan, just a promise to consider a COLA. To date, the MTA has never paid out a COLA on the pensions of their retired employees.

No Martin Luther King Holiday.

No Tier II offset. Why have a 100 Tier II offset when you contribute 3% of your salary into the MTA pension plan? Does the MTA cap the 3% salary contribution into the pension plan at 20% of overtime, like they due with calculation on the retirement benefit? Remember you currently pay 3.9% of your salary ($2,831) on $72,600 for Tier II taxes.

No night time pay differential.