The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday that he had erred in making pension changes a central demand in contract negotiations with the city's transit workers. The chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, did not take responsibility for provoking the strike, the city's first since 1980, but he acknowledged misjudging the union's hostility to his demands over pensions.
See "Pension Demand Was an Error, Chairman of M.T.A. Concedes", Sewell Chan and Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, January 4, 2006