No headway in ongoing negotiations

No details of any new proposals or counter-proposals by the parties emerged publicly from the 16th floor of 2 Broadway, where negotiators spent almost all day in talks Monday.

After concluding around 1:30 a.m. in the early hours of Monday morning, negotiators returned at around 7:30 a.m.

They broke for lunch at about 11 a.m. – around the time Gov. Kathy Hochul entered the building via a side entrance to meet with top MTA managers, ducking the press gathered on Broadway, where protesters were chanting “New York is a union town – Kathy Hochul shut it down!”

Talks resumed at 3 p.m. “and are ongoing at the moment,” MTA spokesman Eugene Resnick told Newsday.

At one point during the break, the MTA’s chief negotiator Gary Dellaverson, long grey hair flowing in the wind, emerged with a police officer who escorted him to the Bowling Green subway station across the street. He boarded an uptown subway train, saying he had to get something from his office.

Around 2 p.m., Dellaverson and the MTA’s policy chief, John McCarthy, convened a news conference on the sunny sidewalk, punctuated by the chants of nearby protesters and an ambulance siren. He said labor union leaders had "no sense of urgency” in the talks and that that the two sides remain no closer to a deal. An hour later, the unions emerged to push back, saying claims they were dragging their feet were “laughable.”