The transit strike, the first in 25 years, shut down the nation’s largest public transportation system on Tuesday, less than a week before Christmas. The strike brought to a grinding halt all Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses and subways throughout the city. The system averages about 7 million passengers on weekdays.
It makes me glad to live in a small town. Where I live “public transportation” is considered sticking your thumb out.
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That Taylor law keeps all public employees from striking. This includes policeman, fireman, trashmen and teachers.
I do not sympathize with the transit workers.
They are paid as much as the cops. They do not contribute a dime to their excellent health care. Full pension after 20 years!
They are living in a fantasy world. The rest of the country does not get such benefits. Try living in the corporate world.
Yet somehow, they feel they are being screwed.
Unions are nothing more than organized crime, only they’re legal. The days when we needed unions are long past…we have a mass media that leaps on bad PR stopries and a court system that loves to award judgements in the millions. We don’t need unions anymore. What they’ve done is equally as disruptive and expensive as a terrorist attack. They have not only made it impossible for the poor to get to work or be with their families during the holidays, they have put lives at risk.
I hope the city breaks the union the way Reagan broke the air traffic controllers when they pushed the issue too far.
As a public servant who belongs to a union I think those transit workers and there union have forgot who the work for.It is not the union or the city it is the public. I have been a public servant for thirty years and I stress this attitude to all new employees who I train.
There seems to be a simple solution to most of our labor problems (I REFER TO THE INABILITY TO STRIKE.) Everybody in this nation of ours should be presented a list of potential labor laws. Vote yes or no on each, and do it again in ten years. I think you would find that most Americans are Labor friendly if you remove the Pro/Con Union propaganda. If you don’t confront people with horror stories they tend to support the working stiff.
I do not sympathize with the transit workers either; they don’t even care that they broke the law. .
Bottom line: you take a job where the law says you can’t strike, guess what, you can’t strike.
If you don’t like that condition, DON’T take the job.
Unions have their place, and have over the history of this country, been beneficial overall. But this strike is of an economic nature, which doesn’t sit well with me since they are making good salaries and have excellent benefits.
These people have taken a job that pays well, with benefits that cares for them unto the grave. For that they promise not to strike. If they don’t like their job then they should resign, quit or just walk, and get them another job. NYC should decertify the union and hire scabs off the street, the way the rest of the nation is doing. I’ll gurantee the lines will be long at the hiring hall.
I don’t understand why Bloomberg doesn’t get off his butt and try to make the situation better. I’ve only seen him walking himself across a bridge and demonizing the union. Maybe if he went down himself and tried to mediate this then something might happen.
… or maybe buy a lot of public use segways!
🙂
Iraq had laws against strikes. Saddam would of just had the transit workers all shot. They had laws against workers having unions and still do. That’s a Saddam tradition the U.S. is keeping in place from what I can tell. Maybe they can have the National Guard run the transit system. The National Guard is kind of busy in Iraq, so maybe that won’t work.
The public is just screwed and the big money guys like the NYC mayor don’t have a clue about what to do now. Talk about Iraq and do what Washington does, change the subject. Have Bush secretly wiretap all the union guys and apply pressure.
If people decide not to show up for work, you can’t have a law that forces them to show up for work. If you have a law outlawing strikes, there is no point in having a union. This isn’t really a srike, it’s more of a protest. It certainly isn’t a contest. The politicians want to turn it into a popularity contest, because that’s how they operate. Maybe there will be a law outlawing protests. I really don’t know.
“If people decide not to show up for work, you can’t have a law that forces them to show up for work. ”
No, but you can fire them. That’s what everyone else gets if they don’t show up for work.
The union has retirement with pensions at age 55. The MTA wanted to change that to 62 for NEW workers, and the union refused. The MTA dropped that request, and asked for more contributions to the pension fund instead. The union didn’t want that either. This means the MTa has to stand firm, or give the union what they want, and go bankrupt down the line from the higher costs, of paying people for 30 years of retirement after 20-30 years of work(during which they contributed 2% a year).
There shouldn’t be any public sector unions. If private companies want to hand out big contracts to kick the can down the road, fine, but you shouldn’t strike against the public. Also, the private companies shouldn’t then turn around and get the taxpayers to foot the bill for their ridiculous contracts, which is what’s happening with these bankrupt companies’ pension funds, like the airlines.
Why these people haven’t been fired yet is beyond me.
Maybe they’re waiting for Christmas Eve. That would be funny.
I’m sure glad I don’t live around New York City right now, but I’m even gladder someone (a lot of someones) has finally stood up to the Taylor laws. That they’re willing to suffer the legal consequences just proves their convictions; it’s called “civil disobedience” in the classic Rosa Parks sense, but writ large.
Whether you think they’re overpaid ingrates or not, these workers care about this issue enough to risk financial ruin and a criminal record. Thousands and thousands of them. I know I wouldn’t have taken such a step unless I really were in dire straits and saw no other option. And they’re betting their resolve is better than yours (where “you” means NYC.) It’s like labor’s last stand.
If the NY government wanted to ban unions back in 1967, it should have banned them and suffered the PR consequences rather than trying to kneecap them with a lousy, one-sided law.
I’m waiting for someone in a position of authority to pull out the “We don’t negotiate with terr’ists” line. Then at least it’ll be funny. For now, listen for “illegal strike” to be a buzzword on talk radio, everywhere at once, out of the blue, by this time tomorrow.
That is, if it isn’t already. I imagine the Norquist meeting this morning was really nuts.
teh striking workers have an average salary of $63000.
raindog, have you talked to any of the MTA workers? I have. They are afraid not to strike. They are afraid that if they don’t listen to the union leaders, they will lose their jobs and/or be forever harassed as scabs. The ones I’ve spoken to, know they have it good.
I’d chill on the Rosa Parks analogies if I were you.
If they don’t listen to the union leaders, they *are* scabs. The definition of a scab is a union member who breaks ranks. Maybe it shouldn’t have the negative connotation that it does, but that’s how the word’s defined in this context.
Unions aren’t just some kind of after-school club you can join and quit at your leisure. We look at them as quaint and selfish nowadays, and maybe they are, but they were meant to be agents of social upheaval, not just negotiators, and that’s where they’re coming from with this. People died to get unions started, and just because the state reneged on its social contract by passing the Taylor Law is no reason for a sufficiently upset employee to shrug, say “oh well, nothing we can do,” and go back to work without taking anything away from the table.
Now, Bloomberg’s strategy over the next few days may be to fire the whole lot of them, and announce that he’s re-hiring them for less pay if they still want jobs. No one in NYC is loving the transit workers now, and I understand that Bloomberg has been walking 2 miles or something to work each day with thousands of other people, so I’m pretty sure he could get away with it. My sympathies are always going to be with labor, but the game is his to lose.
I HATE THE TRANSIT WORKERS WHO ARE STRIKING.
They want increased pay, full benefits AFTER retirement and a decrease of premiums. Basically, they want to pay less and get more. They do not deserve this raise. The workers claim that the MTA is making a lot of profit and that profit should be shared with the workers (sounds like communism). When they get the pay increase, MTA will raise the price again and will have a profit again just in time for the unions to ask the profits to be shared. I think a pay decrease should suffice.
Have you seen the public transportation system? The trains are old and dirty; The platforms are never clean despite the fact there are many janitorial workers (wait… they are never there!); The price is too expensive ($2.50); The trains are never on time (no schedule); Not enough service.
Due to the strike:
There is a new contingency law that says cars entering the city below 96th street is limited to 4 people carpooling. This is terrible as I go to the city sometimes in the morning when the law is in effect (5AM-11AM is the time the law is in place for).
Also because of the strike, my business [in the city] is losing money from the loss of customers [usually workers in the area–who can’t get to work now]. =(
If anyone has a petition for this, I will gladly sign it.
Who can blame government workers, who want decent pay and med benefits and adequate pensions for their sunset years, just like anyone in the private sector. Trouble is, the way events seem to be going, the private sector may not be able to give those things out anymore (think General Motors, etc.).
Go on strike? Not much of an option, if the workplace simply goes out of business or goes offshore. Of course, one could simply work for the government… they don’t go out of business very often (that is, unless a lot of folks get really mad).
STOP GLOBAL TRADE!! (…and then go buy all your stuff at Wal-Mart).