Free Republic

NEW YORK - Threatened with huge fines and possible jail time, the city's transit union suggested Wednesday that it would be willing to end a strike that has shut down bus and subway service for two days — if a plan to change workers' pensions were dropped. The union's suggestion came as millions of New Yorkers again trudged to and from work — some walking miles, others riding bicycles and in-line skates in the morning's 24-degree chill. The contract covering 33,000 New York transit workers expired last week, and the union called the strike Tuesday morning despite a state law...

A private attorney for the city of San Diego's pension fund was shocked when he found out about a plan to boost retirement benefits for a labor union president, and he said that alone could squelch the 2002 deal with the city to continue underfunding the pension system. An in-house lawyer for the retirement system recounted the San Francisco attorney's reaction to the special perk for the union official in an e-mail two years ago. "This, obviously, is huge," Sheila Leone, the in-house lawyer, wrote of the attorney's reaction on March 24, 2003. Leone said the attorney, Robert Blum, told...