33,000 New York City transit workers have gone on strike shutting down the country’s largest public transportation system. The strike was announced around 3 this morning by Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint.

Roger Toussaint: “New Yorkers, this is a fight over whether hard work will be rewarded with a decent retirement. This is a fight over the erosion or the eventual elimination of health benefit coverage for the working people of New York. This is a fight over dignity and respect on the job, a concept that is very alien to the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority).”

The city says the strike is illegal and is turning to the courts to order workers back to their jobs. Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez has been covering the story through the night:

• Juan Gonzalez: This morning around 3 a.m. the union’s executive board finally decided to move forward with the strike. It was after several hours of discussion among the union leaders because they had rejected the last offer of the MTA which would still have required new members of the union to pay into a pension plan, an inferior pension plan. One with a higher retirement age. And despite a slight increase in the contract offer for wages, that issue of creating a 2 tier pension system was the key one that, where the union felt it had to go on strike. However, at the last moment the international parent union of the TWU, Michael O’Brien, the president there, refused to authorize the strike. And that was part of what the delay was. As the parent union, at the final moment, told Roger Tousant and local 100 that they could not endorse or authorize a strike. They would not actively oppose but that they would let the court know that they were not authorizing the strike. It was a difficult situation for Toussaint and the union leadership. Because on the one hand, they were battling the MTA. And on the other hand, their own parent union turned on them at the last moment. Nonetheless, the executive board voted 25 to 10 with 5 abstentions to move forward and organize the first strike in a quarter century here of the transit system. And it is now a battle that the whole organized labor movement will be tested, because Roger Toussant and the union insist that they are fighting not only to defend the pensions of their own members but of thousands and thousands of other public employees who could face similar two tier pension systems in the future.