Uh-oh

Remember when I said it was over? It ain't over.

In an extraordinarily close vote, the New York City transit workers' union today rejected the contract settlement its leaders reached last month with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, scuttling the deal that ended a three-day citywide strike and raising anew the prospect of continued labor unrest.

Of 22,461 votes cast by the deadline at noon today, 11,227 workers voted to ratify the contract and 11,234 voted to reject it, a margin of just 7 votes - or 0.0003 percent.

I noted weeks ago that the MTA seemed to be planning to knife the union in the back. Well, TWU members were apparently afraid of the same. Maybe they're all Left Behinds readers too. More likely they just read the paper and saw George Pataki, who controls slightly less than half of the MTA's board, trying to undermine the deal, and the MTA's director of labor relations asserting that

The contract is cheaper and better for the M.T.A. than at the time that the strike commenced.

Keep in mind that the current, very radical TWU leadership was elected because members thought the last leaders caved to the MTA on their last contract. Members really don't trust the MTA, and the MTA hasn't given them much reason to.