another uneventful commute. i wish everyone was as lucky as i am…evidently, contrary to what i previously said about resourcefulness, it’s not getting any easier at all for a lot of people.
i’m waffling a bit on my opinion of the union. yesterday the other municipal unions held a press conference where they stated that the same law (the taylor law) that prohibits municipal workers from striking also prohibits management from bringing pension issues to the table as a bargaining chip.
the truth?
hard to say. as usual, the press isn’t exacly covering this issue well. they are still focusing on the easy human interest side. why do some actual reportage when you can just stand at the foot of the brooklyn bridge and ask every yahoo that passes what their opinion is?
and they have no shortage of time to devote to stories about how the union bosses might go to jail to calling the strike. if the above statement is true, then why isn’t mayor bloomberg and mta head peter kalikow being threatened with jail for violating the same law?
i wish i knew if this were true. if it is, then the union is really getting a raw deal. if it’s true, the union is getting bent over and fucked in a very clever way, because the city cynically knows that people will blame the strike on the union no matter what. and they can use that power to make the mta union the first municipal union to cave on pension issues, and then they can use that club to beat down the police and the firemen and everyone else.
which sucks. the mta has to attract skilled laborers to work in appalling conditions. as i’ve said before, if you’ve spent thirty years working in tunnels with rats and homeless people building fires and noxious fumes and god knows what else, you deserve to retire at 55.
because, truth be told, if you’ve worked in those conditions for a long time, you probably ain’t living many years past 55.
will the union cave soon? if they do, they’ll try to make it look like they didn’t, so their membership won’t collectively storm roger toussaint’s office. unless they figure that, hey, these fines will bankrupt us all anyway, so what’s the difference between striking for three days and striking for thirty days?
i gotta stop thinking about this.
update: news flash–the striking workers may be returning pending consideration of a new contract. stay tuned.