While I Drive, I Feel for New Yorkers and the Transit Workers
I love Baltimore City, but I for one am glad to be a car-driving suburbanite since I will never have to deal with a transit strike like the 18 million residents of the New York Metro area are dealing with today. (Of course, that has a lot to do with other reasons we have covered here before). As I drive to work, I feel for the people who are feeling the brunt of this action.
I am a bit perplexed as to why transit workers (or a least their union management) believe they deserve the extraordinarily high raise that they believe they deserve. Your average transit worker's starting salary is higher than that of the starting salaries of NYPD officers and New York City teachers; two jobs I would reckon are a little harder and little more dangerous than working as a transit employee.
What is even more perplexing is why their union leadership would allow workers to walk off of the job in clear and open violation of New York's Taylor Law that prohibits public service employees from striking. Combine that with the negative publicity received by striking five days prior to Christmas (which really puts the pinch on downtown and local merchants) and the $1 million fine for every day the strike continues, and you have a union whose leadership is so far detached from reality that they can no longer see it.
The irony is that some people say that these transit workers are creating a "class confrontation" against the rich, when in reality they are only sticking it to the middle and lower class New Yorkers who depend on mass transportation to get to their jobs and to live their lives. The people who suffer, as usual when a major industry such as this goes on strike, are the counterparts of the people on strike who work in different fields. The rich do not feel the effects of this strike; it is the people who union leadership tell workers will be sympathetic to their causes.
And that is what frustrates me about this job action. It goes beyond the fact that the job action is against the law. It goes against common sense that these union workers would be used as pawns by union management in a game of brinkmanship to see if New York's MTA would blink and capitulate to their wills. In the end, it is union workers who are going to pay the heavy, heavy price for that decision. I feel for the suffering that they are going to face.
I am a bit perplexed as to why transit workers (or a least their union management) believe they deserve the extraordinarily high raise that they believe they deserve. Your average transit worker's starting salary is higher than that of the starting salaries of NYPD officers and New York City teachers; two jobs I would reckon are a little harder and little more dangerous than working as a transit employee.
What is even more perplexing is why their union leadership would allow workers to walk off of the job in clear and open violation of New York's Taylor Law that prohibits public service employees from striking. Combine that with the negative publicity received by striking five days prior to Christmas (which really puts the pinch on downtown and local merchants) and the $1 million fine for every day the strike continues, and you have a union whose leadership is so far detached from reality that they can no longer see it.
The irony is that some people say that these transit workers are creating a "class confrontation" against the rich, when in reality they are only sticking it to the middle and lower class New Yorkers who depend on mass transportation to get to their jobs and to live their lives. The people who suffer, as usual when a major industry such as this goes on strike, are the counterparts of the people on strike who work in different fields. The rich do not feel the effects of this strike; it is the people who union leadership tell workers will be sympathetic to their causes.
And that is what frustrates me about this job action. It goes beyond the fact that the job action is against the law. It goes against common sense that these union workers would be used as pawns by union management in a game of brinkmanship to see if New York's MTA would blink and capitulate to their wills. In the end, it is union workers who are going to pay the heavy, heavy price for that decision. I feel for the suffering that they are going to face.
posted by Brian Griffiths at 9:56 PM
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