The transit strike against the people of New York City is illegal, immoral and outrageous. The MTA should start hiring new workers immediately. The state and city should consider privatizing the transit system and allowing multiple providers access to the rails and bus lines.
The City of Boston and the Commonwealth should learn from New York and examine mass transit privatization here as well. Private firms built the New York and Boston mass transit systems. It is time to see how they might improve it.
I am a supporter of unions in general. They bring balance to an economy that is all too often stacked in favor of employers. But they can be just as counter-productive as any other self-interested group. That is what is happening in New York.
The strike is illegal, because under the New York Public Employees Fair Employment Act public employees are not allowed to strike. The union is breaking the law just as surely as, for example, an employer who does not follow labor law. They deserve equal opprobrium.
The strike is immoral, because a small group of well-off people, in the process of breaking the law, is hurting the poorest, weakest, and most vulnerable residents of New York. The average salary for bus operators is more than $56,000 annually; and more than $54,000 for train operators, CNN reports. The union has requested a 27 percent increase over three years.
The starting salaries for transit workers, for reference, are more than double those paid to police officers, fire fighters, and trash collectors, according to the New York Sun.
The median salary for an entry-level clerk in New York City — precisely the type of person most dependent on public transportaion — is $33,699 according to salary.com. Many other straphangers make far less.
Finally, the strike is outrageous because the union has rejected arbitration — a strong indicator of bad faith on its part. Transport Workers Union of America, the New York union’s AFL-CIO-affiliated parent, does not even support the strike. “Michael T. O’Brien, the president of the Transport Workers Union of America, Local 100’s parent union, warned the board that he could not support a strike because he believed the authority’s most recent offer represented real progress,” the New York Times reported.
The President of Local 100 claims to be fighting for all New Yorkers. In fact, he is fighting for special priviliges for a few at the expense of millions of the less well off. Sound familiar?
why, when laws are passed making strikes for particular classes of employees illegal, they don’t always include a mandatory arbitration provision. That’s the norm for police and firefighters – they can’t strike, but they’re guaranteed a hearing before an impartial (hopefully)arbitrator who will decide the dispute (usually by splitting the baby). Why not do the same for transit workers? The disruption to the city is obviously enormous; it disproportionately affects the less-well-off, as Bob points out; and it could all be avoided.
Scott Shields on MyDD has a rather different take on this.
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His main points seem to be,
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One section of particular interest I found in his post is,
But from watching the debate between the union and the MTA, it seems that the issue isn’t merely pay raises or pensions for new hires. The issue is fundamentally one of respect.
Nowhere in any of the reporting that I’ve seen or heard have some of the union’s most important demands been addressed. The union publicly made it clear that they would have been willing to accept lower wage increases if the MTA would agree to scale back disciplinary actions against transit workers. I’m not sure if the media is just ignoring it, but I saw nothing about fewer disciplinary actions in any of the reporting on the MTA’s final offer. The issue is being ignored, either by the MTA, the media, or both.
The TWU is a largely minority union and many of its members feel that the high number of disciplinary actions against workers is a result of racial bias coming from management.
He also quotes from this New York Times article that further supports that view:
[a survey] found that 24 percent of bus and subway workers said they faced serious hazards more than once a month […] Many workers said their jobs failed to provide for essential needs. For example, 78 percent said they lacked access to bathroom facilities at least once a month; 51 percent of bus drivers said they had problems finding a bathroom one or more times a day. […] 13 percent said they faced abuse from supervisors regularly
As Bob points out in the post transit workers are paid significantly better than police officers, at least as far as starting salaries go. Can’t we agree that the NYPD faces significantly more “serious hazards?” If this is about bathroom access and respect, I lose even more respect for the workers because the ramifications of their actions are immense and pale in comparisson their selfishness (I have two friends who had to sleep in the airport last night because they have no car and were afraid of making their flights on time). If it is about respect the union could have shown some by using other forms of protest that would have been significantly less disruptive.
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Also, I don’t know who is to “blame” here but if you are going to claim that city hall is equally of blame at least provide some evidence.
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Well, that’s their problem, isn’t it? There are plenty of protections against workplace discrimination, if they have a case to make then they should sue.
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I made a post about this on my blog, so I’ll keep this short, but what this is fundamentally about is accountability. The MTA seems to be doing its job in disciplining workers who make mistakes, and the union is doing its job in trying to prevent anyone from being accountable for them. The union is doing its best to keep the working man from having to do any work or be accountable for mistakes (while, of course, getting huge wage increases) while the MTA offers a reasonable wage increase that is, considering how ridiculously overpaid these people are, very generous.
While I’m more inclined to agree with Bob’s take than with the MyDD poster I quoted, I think your comment is distressingly out of touch. It echoes things I’ve heard other people say, and that sort of dismissive harshness about working conditions antagonizes me and makes me want to support the union. Bad management creates more labor problems than most anything else except health care, and this really does sound like awful management. Comments like “The MTA seems to be doing its job in disciplining workers who make mistakes” and “The union is doing its best to keep the working man from having to do any work” are ideological, not factual, and serve as huge red flags warning me away from trying to see your point. In other words, you’re hurting your own argument, and only speaking to people who already agree with you.
bad management you are talking about the unions too. Bad management has led to this strike, this is bad timing on behalf of the unions and smacks of pure selfishness. The reflexive nature of progressives is occassionally disturbing to me. I think that is why Bob was “shouted down” by Kos and MyDD. Is it impossible to believe that, gasp, the workers aren’t doing all they can to rectify the situation? Dare I as a liberal and Democrat even quesiton the motives of unions? I think I might have to turn in my Dem membership card for wanting to be on the side of right rather than the side of a supportive interest group. Sorry, I have a hard time hiding my sarcasm and disturbance on this issue.
It doesn’t really sound like you’re responding to my comment here. You’re responding to the larger context. You may want to start a separate thread.
because that is what they do. Their job, whether my wording is extreme or not, is to get people paid more to do less. That is their purpose. They exist to keep people from being accountable for their screwups. I’ll probably make a post on this some time on my blog, because this post is a bit old to make a comprehensive comment on.