Oh. Well, all right then. I see what you’re getting at. I just don’t see why it is that union misbehavior (which does happen) is seen as a shot in the foot, while corporate misbehavior is not. Or rather, I don’t think that it’s right. I don’t suppose that we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on this matter, so perhaps we’d better let the thread return to the matter at hand - I don’t really have anything more to say about unions, although you are free to have the last word, should you desire.
As a resident of Massachusetts, I have limited interest at best in the NYC transit strike, and so I haven’t acquainted myself with the facts. I don’t know enough to feel comfortable with declaring a position one way or the other, except to say that this really, really sucks for New Yorkers, and I hope that it all gets resolved one way or another very quickly. I think we’d have to search far and wide to find someone who disagrees with that sentiment.
This is worse than the night before a snow day when I was a kid. I can’t go to bed or stop refreshing my news viewer.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the union in this case. They blinked three years ago, and struck a pretty weak deal with the MTA in order to avert a strike. This time, I believe they have to tough it out lest lose all relevance.
To be fair, the proposal to lower the retirement age is in respose to the MTA’s proposed elevation of the age from 55 to 62.
It should come as no surprise that our inept governor is not taking an active role. I knew him when he was mayor of the town I lived in. He has little love for the city, and unsurprisingly, the feeling is mutual. We didn’t vote for him, and he isn’t going to go to bat for us.
Well, it’s 12:01 on the dot. I hope they keep the heat on in my building tomorrow.
Well Grelby most people don’t like corporate misbehavior either. Just about everyone that was affected by the Enron collapse was rightfully pissed at the Enron executives.
I’m really not sure this “double standard” exists. People have been bitching about how corporate executives get away with just about any type of fraud they can imagine while destroying the lives and livelihoods of their workers in the process.
However, strictly speaking, sans unionization this particular nightmare would never happen. A corporation wouldn’t ever shut down the transit systems because then they’d not be collecting fares and they’d be losing money.
The union on the other hand doesn’t care, they can strike, screw everyone that uses the transit system, and ultimately get rewarded for it via increased pay.
I don’t have a problem with organized labor. I think it has been an important societal tool and concept for a century now.
I am however opposed to the ability of certain workers who provide essential public service to strike. You can’t go on strike in the military and in most police departments I also don’t think you can go on strike. In my opinion whenever a group blocks the effective operation of society (ala the air traffic controller strike) then the government needs to step in and take harsh action.
Sorry, I find it difficult to feel sorry for workers who make that much for a job that doesn’t require a degree or any specialized training to be hired, and can retire that early with a pension. Lots of people with jobs requiring more education/training, even in NYC, make far less money and have worse benefits, and can’t retire until 65, if that.
Hell, my dad is management for the NY Transit Authority, with an engineering degree, an MBA, and 40+ years of railroad experience, most of it in management, and if you break down his hourly rate it probably comes out about the same. He just turned 65 and isn’t planning on retiring anytime soon - nor does he have any idea how he is supposed to get to work if there’s a strike. Yeah, he probably could take a vacation day - if you think of that ability only in terms of whether he has the vacation days available. But freak that he is, he actually feels responsible for getting his job done.
You don’t have to apologize to me. I’ll be stuck at home tomorrow, too.
I suppose lots of people with more training make less money, but I imagine most of them have the convenience of working at a desk. If spending all day, day after day, in the tunnels were such a great gig, I don’t suppose the MTA would have to pay its workers very much at all.
I hate corporate malfeasance just as much as the next liberal.
But I have no sympathy for these lazy, unskilled, greedy TWU workers. They’re blackmailing an entire goddamned city with their whiny complaints and ludicrous demands.
FYI, just like Eva Luna, my husband works for the TA. He isn’t management but you can’t even apply for his job without an engineering degree. He doesn’t make that much more than most transit workers and he’ll be lucky if he can retire at 55. He sure as hell doesn’t expect a 6% raise each year.
Fuck them if they strike. This is the second night in less than a week where millions of people will go to bed tonight wondering if they need to jump through twenty hoops just to get to work tomorrow.
The union’s demands are unreasonable, while the MTA’s demands would be considered very generous by the standards of the private sector. The city is going to have to get it’s finances into order one way or another, and asking new workers to contribute 1% of their salary to their pension plans is one of the lesser necessary evils imaginable.
The strike is illegal, and with good reason.
I hope people throw eggs at the picket lines. Fuck the TWU.
I was really hoping this was just so much brinksmanship and posing, especially after they declined to strike on Friday. This sucks, I hope it doesn’t last long.
This is not just any strike. When the UAW strikes against Ford, the target of their strike is Ford and Ford’s management/ownership. Ford is hurt by the strike, collateral damage goes as far as Ford’s suppliers, and that’s about it.
When the TWU strikes, it doesn’t just hurt the MTA, 7 million people can’t get to work. People are reduced to walking across bridges in the bitter cold. I was out on the streets a half hour ago, and it is fucking cold, winter is here, baby. You hurt people of all walks of life, who did absolutely nothing to harm you in any way, shape or form. They either suffer through a difficult, and potentially dangerous commute, or don’t get paid, real nice the week before Christmas. This is why these strikes are illegal.
I’m 100% with Bloomberg on this. The TWU is using all of NYC as leverage in their negotiations. The UAW uses the value of its membership to the company as leverage, not their ability to harm millions of innocent people during a strike. As a bit of reference, I have not heard word one about how much this strike will cost the MTA, only how much it will cost the city and how much it will hurt commuters.
For the record, the MTA’s latest included 11% raises over 3 years and retirement at 55 (but with 6% worker contribution for the first 10 years) For everyone saying that workers deserve benefits and how corporations fuck over workers, tell me with a straight face that this last offer is an insult to the union.
Grelby, you know MTA is a tax-funded state agency, right? There’s no chortling plutocrat lighting a cigar with a hundred-dollar bill here. I’m generally a pro-labor yellow-dog Democrat, but if Bloomberg wanted strikebreakers, I’d be on the docks with a crowbar.
Which leads me to wonder where Bloomberg is in all this? He’s about as petty and vindictive as they come and I suspect he won’t take kindly to having his city fucked with.
Actually, I must be wrong, because their illegal walkout is just like another illegal act that happened on a bus.
Ooooh, we’re like Rosa Parks fighting for our civil rights, we’re not just trying to line our pockets and retire earlier than everyone else, fucking over 7 million people in the process. Get bent, I hope your union and all your workers get fucked beyond fucked by the courts.
Bloomy is, AFAIK, going to court to get damages from the union, and those damages are HUGE, millions just in police overtime, from what I hear.
This is one doper checking in who is being personally affected. I live in a part of Brooklyn where there is NO transit alternative to the city buses and subways. Thankfully I don’t have an urgent need to get to Manhattan today, but if I did, I would have to start my trip off with a 2 mile walk to the nearest LIRR station, and then backtrack in order to board a train bound for Penn Station. I was outside long enough to go to the corner deli to get coffee and I was ALREADY freezing my ass off. I can’t believe so many people are walking the East River bridges, and I ESPECIALLY can’t believe that so many companies are threatening to fire workers who don’t show up for work today. I predict many New Yorkers getting sick, winding up in the hospital, and then suing the pants off of both their bosses and the MTA.
A big FUCK YOU to the TWU. You may be sticking it to “the man”, but you are also screwing your entire city in the process.
When unions use heavy-handed, but legal, tactics to win: good for them!
When corporations use heavy-handed, but legal, tactics to profit: good for them!
When unions break the law, they should be punished, both the union itself and the officers that caused the criminal acts to occur.
When corporations break the law, they should be punished, both the corporation itself and the corporate officers that caused the criminal acts to occur.
No double standard here. If you can stay inside the law and force a win for yourself, good on you. You break the law, you’ve gone too far.
Bricker is 100% right. Fuck the TWU. Fuck 'em hard. Fuck 'em hard sideways with a rusty old chainsaw.
I’m glad I have a job where I can telecommute. Still don’t know how the hell I’m going to do my Christmas shopping (or travel to the burbs to see my family, for that matter.)
Well, for starters, unions produce nothing. They invest nothing, create nothing, and in n way shape or form help anyone outside the union. Corporations, even ones behaving badly, areusually growing the world economy and helping anyone; that’s the entire point of their existence. And no corporation, no matter how vile or greedy, can really help but succeed at that (sometimes incompetent ones do fail). Unions just suck the money out of productive investments.
Indeed, the most damaging behavior of the business world isn’t the corporation actually doing something wrong; it’s the officers of said corporation looting it for their own gain, leaving it a hollow shell.
It’s not neccessarily collective bargaining I dislike. It’s unions. They have no purpose beyond their own enrichment, which is why they usually wind up doing that full full-time.
If they’re truly striking illegally, if they truly took their jobs knowing the terms and conditions of employment, and if they truly are going to ruin Christmas for New York commuters based on their own already overpaid greed ($50,000 a year to drive a bus? Retire at 55 or less? 8% raises? Jesus Christ!), then they need a Reagan-era mass firing and lifetime MTA employment blacklisting. I know that some like to say how “hard” these jobs are, but all apologists aside, it doesn’t take a fucking genius to drive a bus, or even a train. I hope that somehow the mayor will get a Strap-on Porta-Spine[sup]TM[/sup] and do what needs doing.
Another problem is that the governor and the mayor are not seeking re-election. So they don’t really have any incentive to apease the unions or the people.
