The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday proposed a contract considerably harsher to the city's transit workers than the one they narrowly voted down last Friday. Some labor experts said the authority's move was intended to pressure union leaders to accept binding arbitration ? but was likely to heighten labor unrest.
See "M.T.A. Returns to Harder Line in Labor Talks", Sewell Chan and Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, January 25, 2006