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.

I went to the 4Knots Music Festival after work yesterday and didn’t get much fun out of it. It wasn’t a total bust. At least I got up close to see about 40 minutes worth of the Nude Beach set but the experience went south after that.

4Knots is what was formerly known as Siren. Still sponsored by the once-great but now near-dead Village Voice newspaper, 4Knots is in its fourth year at the Seaport after a great decade-long run on Coney Island as Siren. I’ve been to plenty of great non-Knots shows on the Seaport pre-Sandy and found it to be a wonderful place to see a show. But the layout and management of this 4Knots was horribly ill-conceived.

The main stage on Pier 16 was set maybe a hundred yards out from main land and was difficult to see for many of the fans bunched up behind the gaudy, view-obstructing sound board near the front. Booths with commercial interests wasted what would have been desirable space along the sides of the pier. Because people couldn’t see, people talked. It sucked.

The beer situation was screwed up too. Two 4Knots beer tents under the F-D-R Drive sold $5 cups of Bud to those who had wristbands and pre-purchased beer tickets. When I started to walk out of the tent with my first two cold Buds, security grabbed me by the waist. I spilled a few ounces from each cup from the abrupt halt in my movement and said “What the Heck?”

“You have to drink those in the tent,” said the security person.

“But there are people all over the pier walking around with the same cups of beer,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

So, I stayed in the tent as directed, and watched people with the same cups of beer walking around outside it – stumped at what appeared to be an inconsistency in the 4Knots policy. All I can surmise is that those walking around with 4Knots cups of Bud bought them in the VIP ship and were allowed greater freedom than non-VIP’s.

Earlier in the afternoon, I walked around the Fest with a jumbo can of Modelo purchased at a bodega near City Hall and that was no problem. That’s what I should have stuck with but by that time I was committed to the tent with the purchase of several $5 beer tickets.

For a gathering of this magnitude, I’d have thought South Street would be shut to vehicular traffic. There were large clusters of pedestrians moving between the two stages on opposite sides of busy South Street yet the only added safety precaution in place was the presence of an outside vendor attempting to make sure crowds walked with the light at Fulton.

I left after Mac DeMarco wrapped up but not before spending more time in the tent so as not to leave any beer tickets on the table.