As many of you know, the Metropolitian Transit Authority (New York City) is threatening to strike this Sunday @ midnight unless they are able to secure a new contract. While I am sympathetic to their cause - 4 workers have died in the last 2 years due to unsafe conditions, and I wouldn’t imagine it’s a terribly interesting line of work. But it is work. And they do get pensions and benefits and a paycheck.
I’m leaning toward the belief that this threat to strike (worth noting, it’s against the law for them to strike) amounts to little more than bullying and extorcian. It’s cold here, real cold; and it’s the holiday shopping season. Mayor Bloomberg estimates that the City will lose (due to loss of commerce, police overtime, etc) between $100M - $350M/day. And nyc ain’t in the best shape financially, as you might imagine.
This topic can obviously be widened to include all organized labor, but what are everyone’s thoughts? Are the MTA leaders bullies? Am being insensitive? Both? Any thoughts?
krazy kat, this is not the right forum for this kind of question. I suspect a Mod will move this to IMHO (or where ever they see fit). GQ should be used for fact based questions not opinion based. You will probably get a different answer from a union rep than you will from someone in Mgt.
FYI, I am not sure what part of NYC you are in but we did have a thread going about how people are going to get to work if there is a strike in IMHO.
I’ll look for the link and paste it here in case anybody is interested.
The TWU (that’s the MTA workers union) tried the same tactic a few years ago, and Mayor Giuliani was successful in getting an injunction against the union preventing them from even talking about a strike, and laying down extremely harsh penalties if they do. They were able to get the injunction because of the Taylor Law which forbids public service employees in essential lines of work (cops, firemen, transit workers, etc) from striking. Mayor Bloomberg is trying the same thing this time around.