When MTA Chairman/CEO Tom Prendergast walked away from negotiations Monday on a new contract for union workers at the Long Island Rail Road, it signaled who had the upper hand in these talks.

While there’s not enough distance between the stated bargaining positions of the two parties to merit shutdown of the railroad when Sunday’s somewhat artificial deadline arrives, these types of showdowns often become staged, stunt-like contests of who-blinks-first.

I predict the union ends up budging before Sunday. They may not allow it to be portrayed that way but the workers aren’t gonna want to walk off onto a deeply unpopular picket line on behalf of employees who aren’t even on the books yet.

Yes, the union has the legal right to wage a LIRR strike unlike its brethren in the NYC subway. The threat of shutting down the LIRR is massive leverage in and of itself. The MTA’s contingency plan is ludicrous starting with the notion that they’re gonna find scores of qualified non-union people to drive buses.

But the reason Prendergast stormed out yesterday with such haste is because he knows he can wait for the other side to cave before it gets to Sunday. The rank and file certainly must know the public isn’t behind them given the publicly-known offer and counter-offer on the table.

Not paying a slice of one’s health premium or pension is no longer considered by most workers in the private sector to be a realistic expectation. The LIRR unions deserve credit for putting up a fight to preserve that notion but they’re not gonna win public support if that’s what shuts down the railroad.

Prendergast can’t control how the union plays its hand. He certainly wants to avoid a strike but appears determined to initiate the insurance and pension offsets considered standard provisions in most labor contracts these days. If the MTA continues to clearly articulate its position – and current contract offer – it will ultimately win.

Prendergast reports to Governor Cuomo so don’t buy the governor’s spin that he’s not involved. He’s involved. Cuomo foolishly downplayed the impact of a strike during comments Tuesday. A bluff, I guess.

The mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio is scheduled to go on a ten-day vacation to Italy with his family starting on Friday. While de Blasio has no seat at the bargaining table, he will definitely be twisting in discomfort if the LIRR shuts down. He would need to be here in that instance and would likely face criticism if he stayed abroad.

-Kudos to the office of my City Councilman Daniel Dromm for convincing the NYPD to relocate its fume-spewing mobile command center parked for more than a month on Roosevelt Avenue in front of the 74th Street subway station. Used by the 115th precinct to bolster police presence in hot spots, the school bus-like command center shot out near-constant plumes of thick exhaust into the faces of those waiting for the Q70 bus to LaGuardia Airport. The poisonous clouds generated by the command center also infiltrated the subway station where thousands of passengers pass daily not to mention to the confined token booth worker. The 115 has long been considered to be on good terms with the community but wasn’t sensitive to the problem its command center was causing at the ill-suited position it was parked. Credit to Dromm’s constituent services liaison Sharon Stanley for giving the necessary nudge that finally got police brass to move the command center elsewhere.