US News

MIKE VOWS TO ‘CHECK’ TWU

The city will fight “as strongly as” possible an attempt by the transit union to get back the right it lost after the December 2005 strike to automatically deduct dues from its members’ paychecks, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

“This city was very badly hurt by a strike, and this is a union that, incidentally, struck a couple of other times as well,” Bloomberg told reporters.

“The dues-checkoff privilege is something [a] judge revoked until the union agreed to do what is in the public’s interest. We would very strongly, I think is a fair way to phrase [it], object to any change in that.”

As of June 1, the union’s checkoff power was suspended under a string of penalties meted out to TWU Local 100 by a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge for the illegal strike that crippled the city just in time for the holiday season.

Without the checkoff, the union has to ask members to pony up their dues.

The TWU, which a spokesman said has “complied with the judge’s order,” is due to file papers in court this week requesting reinstatement of the checkoff rights.

Bloomberg insisted yesterday that the papers the union has filed so far are not what the judge requires.