UPDATE: Good op-ed from the Daily News, who's front-page was a total sham today.

Steve Gillard, two-fisted as they come, has a lot of interesting postings around the transit strike. The most recent one about inter-union politics between the TWU local and international casts a very different light on the whole "their parent union thinks its a fair deal" idea:

Toussaint won election by campaigning against the old guard which was personified by former TWU Local 100 president Sonny Hall who had gone on to head the national union. Toussaint decisively beat a Hall-backed candidate, claiming that the union had squandered both its finances and its clout by playing footsy with transit managers. Once in office, he sliced his own salary by $15,000. His slate of dissidents made similar cuts in their pay. He eliminated an extra pension that local officers had awarded themselves, and also dropped an expensive health plan for officers, putting them on the same plan as members...

In 2002, during the last round of contentious talks between the local and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Toussaint and his allies were haunted by the possibility that should they strike, they faced not just the legal sanctions by the state and the city, but the likelihood that Hall would place the local under trusteeship, firing the elected leaders.

The endorsement of the MTA's offer comes from Hall, who was apparently a prime example of a bad union leader: in bed with managment and lining up all sorts of perks for himself over and above what he got for workers. Reminds me of when Homer got to be the union boss of the power plant.

Homer: What's it pay?

Lenny: Nothin'... unless you're crooked.

Homer: Woohooo!

Also note that my own stuff in the lengthy below is just my analysis, or better yet my own sepctulation. I don't have any experience or connections with the TWU, and what I'm talking about is all based on my observations of other labor disputes. Steve's blog has a lot more news coverage.