NYC Union: 'We Are Not Thugs'

Union Leaders Could Face Jail Time As Transit Strike Continues

(CBS/AP)  Transit workers who walked off the job and shut down New York's subway and bus system came under withering pressure Wednesday to end their strike, facing penalties that could include jail time for union leaders and fines for the rank and file.

With a judge and lawyers raising the stakes against the union, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint signaled that the union would be willing to resume negotiations and possibly go back to work without a contract if the transit agency took its current pension proposal off the table. The union says the pension proposal is woefully inadequate.

Across the country, pensions are being scaled back, reports CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wanted to do the same thing – push the retirement age to 62 from 55 and have future employees contribute 6 percent instead of 2 percent to their pensions.

The union called the offer insulting, but Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute says she thinks most Americans would disagree.

"They'd love to be similarly insulted," Gelinas told Alfonsi.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the strike "needs to end, and it needs to end right now," and questioned how union leaders could claim the walkout was done to benefit the city's working class when the strike is doing so much economic harm to New York.

Bloomberg said the strike is "not good for anybody" (video), saying both the transit workers and the New York economy will be hurt.

Bloomberg and Toussaint exchanged their harsh words at separate news conferences as several legal issues related to the strike came before a judge.

State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones ordered Toussaint and two of his deputies brought before him Thursday morning to face criminal contempt charges for ordering the walkout.

New York's attorney general has asked that the officials be fined, but Jones suggested it was also a "distinct possibility" he could send one or more to jail for defying a court order barring the strike.

State-supervised mediation talks were under way Wednesday between union officials and the MTA, and Jones said he was hopeful there might be a breakthrough overnight. The judge has already imposed a $1 million-per-day fine on the union — a punishment that would not take effect until appeals are complete.

Union lawyer Arthur Schwartz warned that hauling Toussaint into court would halt the talks, and could make a settlement more difficult.

In perhaps an even tougher measure, lawyers for the city began a separate legal proceeding Wednesday that could eventually lead to rank-and-file union members being hauled into court to face charges of civil contempt.

Michael A. Cardozo, New York City's corporation counsel, asked the judge to issue a second order directing union members to return to work. If such an order was ignored, Cardozo said the city could ask for heavy fines per worker — a punishment that goes beyond the docked-pay penalty that workers already are experiencing for the illegal strike.

The fines would be at the discretion of the judge, could range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, and would come out of the workers' own pockets, rather than union coffers.

"We're doing everything possible to make the union obey the law," the judge said, adding that union members need to "realize the economic consequences of their actions."