Text size:

Mediators made the difference

BY ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO | STAFF WRITER

December 23, 2005

A veteran government official and two private labor mediators with close union ties were instrumental in getting the transit talks back on track, several officials said Thursday.

The trio was led by Richard Curreri, the director of conciliation at the state Public Employment Relations Board for the past 15 years. He was joined by veteran mediators Martin Scheinman of Sands Point and Alan Viani of Dobbs Ferry.

They finished their work Thursday, but remain poised to return as mediators, not arbitrators, if the talks stutter again.

"We're just standing by now," Viani said Thursday. "We'll be ready in a flash, if needed."

Viani and others stressed that the mediators needed to get the talks going again and were not expected to settle the issues between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union.

Scheinman, 53, has handled labor disputes in both the public and private sectors, including those involving health care workers, Long Island Rail Road employees and the Newspaper Guild.

Viani, 69, was the lead negotiator for District Council 37, the largest municipal union, until he joined the Office of Collective Bargaining -- the city's version of PERB -- in 1985. He retired in 1993 to become a private mediator/arbitrator.

Curreri, a resident of Voorheesville, is "a terrifically skillful mediator in the Ted Kheel tradition," said David Lipsky, director of the Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University.

Lipsky said Curreri and Kheel, a transit negotiator in the 1970s, are of a mold of mediators who are effective because in terms of conflict "they kind of embrace it, put arms around it."

Staff writers William Murphy and Michael Rothfeld contributed to this story.