NYC Transit Strike

[Chewbacca]

How long will it last with such steep fines? Is there any power left in the people or are we all just a bunch of whiners?

What is the point of having a labor union if the state makes it illegal to use your strongest tactics? Might as well make unions illegal if they are so damn pointless.

Score 1: Big government and business.

Score 0: the little man.


www.bloomberg.com

[Azred]

I suspect that the city will give in before the union because they are losing a lot more money than the union is being fined. Besides, $1M is a lot less than the city is losing in sales tax revenue.

Other than that, I am not up-to-date on the ins and outs of NYC and the Transit Workers Union. They were probably overworked and underpaid, or something like that.

[Timber Loftis]

If the city can't hire scabs, then the workers can't strike. Sorry, Chewie, but I think the unions have the deck stacked in their favor -- not the other way around. If I were the Transit I'd have fired 32,000 workers today, hired new ones, and awaited the breach of contract lawsuit. Unions be damned.

Azred, a 15-yr bus driver or subway operator in Chicago has a $70,000+/year job, and a pension, and great benefits. Muddle that over as you go to work tomorrow. And, muddle over the fact that 75%+ of those jobs are affirmative action jobs handed to minorities. Ain't life grand?

[shamrock_uk]

Agreed, the same is true in London transport. These industries are unionised like the 70s.

[Azred]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Azred, a 15-yr bus driver or subway operator in Chicago has a $70,000+/year job, and a pension, and great benefits. Muddle that over as you go to work tomorrow.

Then what the @#$%^&* did I go to university for?! [img]graemlins/1dizzy.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/5bloodymurder.gif[/img] [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by Azred: quote: Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Azred, a 15-yr bus driver or subway operator in Chicago has a $70,000+/year job, and a pension, and great benefits. Muddle that over as you go to work tomorrow.

Then what the @#$%^&* did I go to university for?! [img]graemlins/1dizzy.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/5bloodymurder.gif[/img] [img]tongue.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]It's a good question. I did three years at a good uni, currently slogging my way through another three for a professional qualification earning a 'good' salary for a first job, yet I'm on half of what a tube driver will earn. They only have one lever in their cabs for crying out loud! Even the station guys get up to £30k and all they do is tell you to 'mind the gap'.

[ 12-20-2005, 07:57 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Chewbacca]

Nothing wrong with paying good and well for civil servant jobs. I've got no gripes about it in theory.

Plus it is a big responsibility to move commuters around in this day and age. Driving a bus or train 40 hours a week might not sound like work, but I bet it ain't as easy as it sounds. After London and Madrid being mindful of who is on board could possibly alter a dangerous situation and must add daily stress. If the workers do a good professional job than an increase during a profitable year is a reasonable demand.

Besides since when did having a degree automatically entitle anybody to anything? You still gotta work, perhaps even fight at times, like everybody else to get ahead.

[shamrock_uk]

Partially agree, but there are a few big "if's" in your post.

"If the workers do a good professional job" - the service on the London underground is anything but professional and on the few occasions I've had contact with their staff the same applies to them for the majority. Even worse if you're female.

The stress they face wondering what dodgy characters are on the tube is no different to that experienced by all the other sardines who have to commute - and we don't get paid for it. Not to mention that being at the end of the train the driver has a better chance of surviving any bomb-like incident than his cargo.

Furthermore, I've no problem with paying a decent wage to public servants in principle, but the high wage is not earned through the skills they have to exercise to perform the job, but simply as a result of extreme unionisation.

I can't find a link for the life of me, but there was an amusing story about a year ago about these two tube employees who were found drinking on the job in a storeroom, surrounded by empty bottles. They were fired (or was it suspended with full pay?...), the unions stepped in, and they were later reinstated on the grounds of wrongful dismissal.

By all means, pay a high wage to those who deserve it, but this is paying them a high wage for all the wrong reasons.

As for being entitled to a decent job because of a degree, I can see where you're coming from and in an abstract sense I agree with you. Yet I (and most others these days in the UK) choose to burden ourselves with large amounts of personal debt in order to increase our skills and thus command a larger wage which should (eventually!) pay off our debts. It's a simple cost-benefit analysis based on our expectations of future earnings in a free labour market.

If the labour market isn't free then, although I may not be justified, I still have the right to get cheesed off about it

[ 12-20-2005, 08:24 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: Nothing wrong with paying good and well for civil servant jobs. I've got no gripes about it in theory. Plus it is a big responsibility to move commuters around in this day and age. Driving a bus or train 40 hours a week might not sound like work, but I bet it ain't as easy as it sounds. After London and Madrid being mindful of who is on board could possibly alter a dangerous situation and must add daily stress. If the workers do a good professional job than an increase during a profitable year is a reasonable demand. Besides since when did having a degree automatically entitle anybody to anything? You still gotta work, perhaps even fight at times, like everybody else to get ahead.

Um... in a normal world, working to get a degree would allow you a better-paying job.

The problem isn't paying well for union jobs, it's what paying too well for union jobs does to the other jobs. The Big-3 auto maker union employees make 3-5X what other similarly-situated factory employees make. $130,000/yr. to run a forklift for GM. $12-$18/hr. for normal forklift driver factory jobs across the country. The success of the big unions has fallout on the rest of the employees in an industry. If they all were at $50K/yr. it would be a better, more fair system.

As for the bus drivers, sure, as with any trade skill it is a learned skill. I don't fault tradesmen. Well, Chicago bus drivers are assholes, who bully traffic all day long, and I often flip them off, and yell and curse -- of course they don't mind. Well, sometimes they do -- in summer, when their window is open and we're side by side at a red light and i'm yelling and pointing right at them, calling them stupid sons of.... But I digress.

Point is, union jobs in this very unionized town make mad money, while the same or equivalent jobs at non-union shops suffer.

Unions had their day and age. If minimum wage laws were what they should be (no raise in 10 years!!!) and if worker safety laws were what they should be (they are), we wouldn't need unions at all.

So, ditch the unions, and raise minimum wages.

p.s. -- My biggest gripe with the specific rules of most unions is the seniority system. A union company is not allowed to promote one employee if another has been in the same job longer. Totally discourages hard work and incentive, totally encourages poor work ethic. And, totally unfair to the employer, who should at least be free to promote the best person for the job.

[ 12-20-2005, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Azred]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: Besides since when did having a degree automatically entitle anybody to anything? You still gotta work, perhaps even fight at times, like everybody else to get ahead.

I know; I was just being facetious. (by the way, facetiously is the shortest English word containing all the vowels--including "y"--in the correct order).

I wouldn't want to fight traffic sitting on my keister for 40 hours a week.