This is what happens when you get ACRE officers involved in MTA M-N contract talks. The cannibalism of unions along with their new hires and the junior membership continues for the benefit of senior members. Of course Executive Director of the MTA, Mr. Elliott Sanders is delighted that ACRE and the M-N Coalition came together for this deal. Metro-North's company subsidized Association gets bailed out of the inferior terms of their “historic contract”. Now the blame for the great divide between newly hired workers and senior workers is shifted to the M-N Coalition of Unions for creating two totally different retirement plans. First it was new hires co-paying for medical, now it becomes, why do you get to retire at age 55, while I have to work seven years longer until I am 62. Read some of the highlights from the NY Times article published on 3/31/07. Does this deal really save M-N employees from having to ever co-pay for their health and welfare costs? Did the MTA agree to that in writing in the current proposal? No, it just prolonged the argument for the next contract in 2010. New hires will then have to co-pay for their health and welfare benefits and not be able to retire until age 62. Great leadership decision, but not to worry, these Coalition leaders will all be retired by then, without ever having to pay one single dime. They will not have to face the new hires, only those left will have to face them and try to keep the peace. Good luck. What was the phrase “united we stand, divided we fall”. The ACRE membership is totally divided, now it is only fair that the Coalition membership join their ranks.

“When city subway and bus workers went on strike 15 months ago, their leaders refused to accept changes to pension benefits for newly hired workers but ultimately agreed to have members pay a portion of health insurance premiums.

A group of Metro-North Railroad unions that hammered out a contract deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority took the opposite tack yesterday, agreeing to raise the age at which pension benefits would kick in as a way to spare their members from having to contribute to the health insurance plan.

But the Teamsters union, which represents about 560 track workers, dropped out of the negotiations and could go on strike this summer.

Despite the Teamsters' absence, the deal signifies a truce between two rival union coalitions that represent different sections of the railroad's work force. The two groups had clashed for years, with engineers and conductors on one side and maintenance workers on the other.

Elliot G. Sander, the executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that having the two factions come together was a major benefit of the contract.

“You were having a work environment where there was the high potential of this conflict boiling over and impacting the service to our customers,” he said.

But the key to the negotiations appeared to center on the issue of pensions and health care costs, which have been of increasing concern for public agencies.

When subway and bus workers in Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union went on strike in December 2005, the union president, Roger Toussaint, rejected changes that would give newly hired workers less generous pensions than those of current employees.

He said he would not “sell out the unborn.”

Instead, Mr. Toussaint ended the strike after 60 hours and agreed to a contract that maintained pension benefits but included a contribution to health insurance costs equivalent to 1.5 percent of workers' pay.

In their talks with the authority, the Metro-North unions departed from that model.

Mr. Brown said that the new contracts created a new pension tier for newly hired workers. While current employees can begin receiving pension payments at age 55, new workers will not be eligible for pension payments until age 62.”