With a contract deadline just after midnight tonight, representatives of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the transit workers' union met intermittently to stave off a strike as the agency's top negotiator warned that "we are not in a good place." He spoke just moments after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a comprehensive emergency plan to contend with a walkout.
See "Transit Talks Proceed in Starts and Stops", Steven Greenhouse and Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times, December 14, 2005