N.Y. Transit Union Gets Strike OK

Transit workers have authorized union leaders to call a strike if contract talks with the city fail, union officials said Saturday.

The union’s executive board could make the decision Dec. 15, when the current contract expires, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint said.

“Our members moved a resolution to authorize the executive board of Local 100 to call a strike if all else fails,” he said. Thousands of the 34,000 union members attended a meeting to vote on the resolution.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said a walkout by the subway and bus employees would force the city to spend an additional $10 million a day in police overtime to account for the traffic increase during the holiday shopping season. “A strike would be illegal and phenomenally damaging to our city,” he said.

State law bars strikes by public employees. The last transit strike in the city was in 1980.

The city’s transit agency offered no raises in the first year of a proposed three-year pact and said it may negotiate raises for the last two years if the union increased productivity.

“The municipal workforce ... has to understand that the days of getting raises without improving productivity are over,” Bloomberg said. The city is facing a budget deficit of as much as $6 billion next year.

More than 7 million people ride MTA buses and trains each day, making the city’s public transit system by far the nation’s largest.