Re: NYC Transit strike
The 30 Pound Snail Who Lives on Gar Lipow’s Monitor wrote:
For those of us seeing the NY city transit stike from a distance, what is the trick behind the management offer of binding arbitration? Is it simply that the union is certain to win a strike?Why go out of your way to provoke one in that case?
I don’t know the answer about binding arbitration, though I’d guess that the union doesn’t want to sacrifice any of its potential power and autonomy, esp in striking just before Xmas. In their own history http://twulocal100.org/?q=history they declare the 1982 introduction of arbitration to have been a union victory.
But I’ve got to say the Transport Workers Union has done nothing at all to build public support for what would almost certainly be a massively unpopular strike. I was in NYC for the 1980 strike, and it was absolute hell. And to a public used to cutbacks and DIY pension schemes, the TA’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62 doesn’t sound unreasonable. (Of course, I don’t agree, but I’m not the general public.) The union, and not management, would be blamed for forcing people to spend 2 hours walking to work and for the massive traffic jams. The union is widely seen as having lost the 1980 strike, and the political situation of labor is certainly no better today.
The TWU could have done something with the Transit Authority’s plan to eliminate conductors and token-booth clerks, playing on public fears of crime & terrorism. (The TA is buying new automated trains that can be completely controlled by the driver, eliminating the need for a conductor to open & close doors. And with tokens gone, replaced by a computerized MetroCard system, there’s much less need for clerks to be in every station; token clerks have been replaced by customer service people, but they’re much fewer in number, and more & more stations will be unstaffed in the future.) But they haven’t done any agitprop. No leafleting, no ads. Their website http://twulocal100.org features mainly reprints of newspaper articles. And given New York State’s Taylor Law, which imposes enormous fines on public workers (two days of pay for every day of the strike) and unions for striking ($1.5 million in 1980), labor could get seriously screwed by a strike.
Doug
December 20th, 2005 at 11:35 am
We support the transit Worker’s strike. I work for the city, and the unions backs are being broken with tiny increases in salary negotiated by massive givebacks in pension, vacation leave and give backs in medical benefits. The MTA projected losses for this year a while back and now have a humongous surplus. Enough!!!
December 20th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
this is madness,
millions of contractor employees in america go without a contract. these greedy uneducated men and women are engaging a ploy to exercise a powerplay against mayor bloomberg and the city of new york. when the air traffic controllers threatened to strike in the 80s, Ronald Reagan fired them. that is what we should do to these people. They should have fired the SEPTA workers in philadelphia this fall as well. they’re allowing the greedy people who dont even meet their professional requirements. if i as a contractor fail to meet my deadlines i dont get paid, why should we continue to reward the failures of metropolitan transit workers in the eastern metropolises. Fire them all, hire some of the professional contractors looking for work who have values and pride.
December 21st, 2005 at 12:49 pm
Annette Strong doesn’t understand the point of the surplus or where it came from. Do yo uknow that the MTA sold a huge amount of real estate over the last 2 years which made upa large part of the surplus. And unlike Wall Street jobs where the employees EARN their bonuses by performance, I definately don’t see the public workers EARNING bonuses because of the surplus which was mainly achieved through cost cutting and their real estate sales. I don’t agree with them giving that surplus back to the commuters through the holiday discount passes but the union using that surplus is the lamest excuse for their ludicrous demands. Go around the WORLD and show me public civil employees making an average of over $55,000, getting full medical benefits, retiring at 55 with full pension (that is 1/2 annual salary) without having to put any money up front. There’s a lot of people in the public that didn’t know about this and aside from having their lives messed up by the strike are now extremely annoyed at these selfish union officials. I know most of the workers are only striking because they are being told to do it and are afraid of what the union would do if they don’t join in. I agree with AngryCommuter. Keep fining them, and then fire them. They don’t deserve half of what they get. And as someone who uses their service daily, I can testify to that.
December 21st, 2005 at 5:12 pm
I totally support the strike. I’m a freelance computer tech, and I currently live in Kensington in brooklyn, and getting into the city to work is totally out fo the question for me until this is over, so I’m losing money like a sieve.
None the less, I support the strike.
Why?
Well, I USED to live in Manhattan, and there used to be meaningful rent stabilisation, tax laws that discouraged uncontrolled speculation real estate the drives rents into the stratosphere. A minimum wage worker’s weekly salary more or less equalled the monthly rent on a crappy one bedroom in a lousy neighborhood like the Lower East Side or East Harlem. Life was far from perfect, but anyone with any kind of job, no matter how crappy, as long as it payed legal wages, lived decently.
No more. In 1981, striking PATCO workers were fired for making perfectly reasonable demands for wage increases and work place reform. The unions suddenly lo0st all guts, and, soon afterwards, all influence. Laws that protected working people vanished, rents rose, wages fell, jobs fled off-shore, and well, the rest, as they say, is history.
Union lobbyists, and the threat of strikes, and union phone banks and theirt power to mobilize voters, are what kept wages high and rents reasonable in this country. they made politicians fear workers even more than loved corporate money. I saw the Howeard Dean campaign two years ago as a sign of the return of some much needed chutzpah to the moderate left. I see the strike as an even better sign of this. I look forward to more disruptive strikes, more gridlock, maybe even (dare I wish it?) huge piles of trash building up in the street during a sanitation strike, and maybe even a firemen’s strike. I look forward to the return oif rising wages for all workers, stagnant rents, and a reasonably decent standard of living in this country, with single payer health care and free college education. My grandfather founded the first truck drivers union in NYC back in the nineteen teens, and in those days the average life expecatncy of a factory worker was 19 years of age, the average workday 18 hours. Everything decent that workers in this country have is the legacy of the age of wildcat strikes, nationwide job actions, and union leaders who sanctioned violent action against picket line crossers. I look forward to the return of this, and the subsequent return of decent pay for a days work, and living wages, health care, and education for all. Toussaint, we native new yorkers salute you!
Joshua Whalen
December 21st, 2005 at 7:28 pm
I agree with angrycommuter! I live and work in Connecticut so the strike does not directly affect me, but it absolutely drives me crazy! From my understanding, some of these uneducated transit workers are making over $60,000 per year driving a bus. And they want increases double the rate of inflation! They don’t want to pay for healthcare! They don’t want to pay into the pension! Unions suck. There is no need for them anymore. The workers should all be fired and if they want their jobs back, they should take a pay cut and agree to any demands of the MTA. As they continue to automate transit, these workers are out of jobs anyway. They and the union are killing the economy in the most important time of the year. Businesses need this holiday revenue and the Union knows it. Talk about 911 killing the economy - NYC is losing $400 million per day. They should fine the Union that much. I’ve lost jobs before; I’ve had crappy jobs and you know what I did? I didn’t whine, I found a new job. If they don’t like it, try finding another job - with benefits that come close to their current ones. I work for 3 year old company. I haven’t seen a raise yet, but I’m in it for the long haul and hope it will pay off in the end. Those workers are a discrace!