the strike. Demands and counteroffers The TWU demanded that all members of the union receive a 6% salary increase per year for each of the three years of the contract, plus more expensive accommodations for maternity leave, and more money to spend on station maintenance. The MTA offered a 3% raise the first year, a 4% raise the second year, and a 3.5% raise the third year. The striking workers reportedly earn an average of about US$48,000 annually. The TWU also wanted to lower the age at which point the employee is eligible for a full pension from 55 to 50, and the number of years worked to qualify for that pension from 25 years to 20. A 20/50 pension plan had been put in place a few years after a transit strike in the mid-1960s. The immediate retirement of thousands of the most skilled workers, followed by the soaring costs of workers receiving one or more years in retirement for each year worked, was a key factor in the financial and physical collapse of New York City's transit system in the 1970s. By 1980, a less generous 25/55 pension had been imposed on new workers by the state legislature. By the time of the strike, the financial damage from the 20/50 pension plan had abated, because most of those who benefited had retired with their pensions funded, but those hired under the 25/55 plan were approaching the age at which those who preceded them had recently retired. A dissident group within the TWU, the New Directions movement, promised a 20/50 pension plan, among other things, as part of its election campaign. After several close and bitterly contested elections, by the time of the strike it had taken over the leadership of the TWU. Despite the damage done to the transit system by a retroactive enhancement of the pension plan in the 1960s, the New York State legislature passed a 20/50 plan several times over the objections of MTA management in the years leading up to the strike. Each time it was vetoed by then-Governor Pataki, who had signed off on hugely expensive pension enhancements for other public employee unions. Conversely, the MTA had wanted to raise the retirement age for newer workers from 55 to 62, but dropped this demand in exchange for pension contributions from new workers of 6% of gross salary per year for the first 10