(no subject)

[mamadeb]

I believe in unions. I believe that without unions, the workers in this country would lack proper wages and benefits.

I believe they should strike when they denied this.

TWU was not denied this, and most of them did not want to strike.

Right now - businesses are closing because either their employees or their customers can't get to them. A lovely, brand-new restaurant a block from me opened on Friday and is dark now because they can't get their staff in. Will they close? I don't know. They were building for most of of a year.

As for me - it cost me $40 to get to and from work yesterday.

My earnings for the day then? $10, if you take out taxes and such. There's no point in me going in. I don't work on Thursday anyway, or Friday, but Monday is something else.

Comments

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

Obviously I'm not as close to this as you are, and am only hearing the bits and blurbs on the national news, but in my mind, the union leader is being incredibly, incredibly selfish.

That said, I do have a question--I've heard that there are passenger restrictions in cars, only 4 persons/vehicle. I haven't heard details as to why this is, or if there are exceptions for mini-vans and what not. Can you shed some light on this? I mean, if you can fit 5 relatively small folks in a sedan, then why restrict that?

[thermidor.livejournal.com]

I had thought it was at least 4 per vehicle.

Mama, is that right?

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

I had thought it was at least 4 per vehicle.

Well, D'oh! That certainly makes more sense!

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

They'd love five folks in a car, believe me. The restriction s no *fewer* than 4 people per passenger car between the hours of 8AM and 11AM. This is to get into Manhattan - once a car is in Manhattan, the restriction goes away, to permit drivers to drop people off.

It's to limit the number of cars clogging the bridges and tunnels onto the island during morning rush.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Ironically here where public transport unions are on strikes ALL THE TIME and take horrible advantage of it, it seldom paralizes as much the whole city, they're always at least a minimum service that let people make do (even if with difficulty and stress)

Being on a strike is one thing, it's the bad effects for the rest of the (innocent) world that's outrageous. I know people often say here that Public Transport should still be functionning but without making the customers pay, so that they can hurt the firm but not their customers. However it's illegal in France to do that.

[sdelmonte]

From what understand, this strike is over how much workers need to give their pension plans. And while I can understand that workers would like to give as little as they can, to cripple a city over how much you have to contribute to your own pension (which is moeny you will get back later, after all) is bizarre. But then, it's also bizarre that the MTA was willing tolet a strike happen just to make this one small change to the contract (a change that would save very little money).

A pox on both sides, I say. Jail both Roger Toussaint and Peter Kslikow!

[cellio]

I haven't been following it closely, but I thought the fight was mostly about employees having to pay some small portion of their health-care costs. These days almost every employee has to kick in for health care, so I have no sympathy there.

That said, it sure sounds like there's a lot of blame to go around in this one, and it would be really nice (if wishful thinking) if those responsible for this mess had to compensate everyone who loses money over it.

[cyprinella]

My understanding is that they do already pay into health care and pension but new employees hired after this new contract get screwed by having to pay a substantial amount more for health care and pension. Which is fairly common pretty much everywhere in the private sector and in a lot of public jobs. I know my mom gets screwed similarly because she got hired like three months after the teachers union in her area renegitiated their contract and ended up with a similar situation.

[cellio]

Yeah, that's a problem, but so long as both employers and unions believe that longevitity in the job rates different perks, it'll continue. Personally, while I think it's ok for differential vacation, say, it would be better all around if everyone in a company/union paid the same for basics like health care.

As for whether that's "same amount" or "same percentage of salary", I'm leaving that open.

[tod-hollykim.livejournal.com]

Actually, the current MTA employees, ie the TWU, pay nothing toward their pensions. The MTA wants the *new* employees to pay toward their pension and health care I think.

At least the strike is over for the moment.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

As with any other type of organization, a union has dual priorities: whatever its intended function might be (in this cse, getting better conditions for its workers), and maintaining/extending its own power. From everything I can tell, this strike is more for the second than the first -- the union got itself backed into a corner where it felt it needed to prove it still had teeth. Now that it's backlashing so badly, I hope they can find their way out of that corner.