So, I haven't yet commented on the NYC transit strike yet. This was not simply due to laziness (though certainly that delicious sin played a role)...I wanted to read a bit about what was going on before I passed judgment (I do that sometimes...I don't know why since no one else seems to). It certainly looked from the casual observer's perspective that the union leaders were just being douchebags. And to some degree they were.
But allow me to take a short but important detour: In the process of trying to read up on this issue, I found it surprisingly and infuriatingly difficult to find any fucking information about the points of contention in the strike. I had to go to the TWU home page to get an explanation of what they were pissed about, and I have yet to find a concise description of the MTA's position. The news organizations have been fucking useless on this issue, even the New York Times.
Have all reporters become such pussies that they're afraid to report _anything_ substantial related to a controversial issue? Is the safer "human interest" bullshit stories all you nadless writers have left? Get some fucking balls and don't waste my goddamn time by writing an article about the woman who had never seen the ground above the subway in Manhattan before and FUCKING TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON! I am more pissed about this than I am about anything related to the strike. Were you people jerking off all the way through journalism school? Is "who," "what," "when," "how," and most-bloody-importantly "_WHY_" such difficult concepts to master? Do you fuckwits honestly think it's reporting when you tell me how someone feels about walking through the cold? Here, I'll help you: it sucks and it makes your nipples chafe! There! Are you happy? Stop fondling the coin purse of the Everyman and do some fucking reporting, you fucking coddled and overpaid assholes! Jesus.
I hope you choke on your goddamn espressos, douchebags.
Ah hem. Moving on...
Okay...my take on the strike: partially justified, but stupid nonetheless. I sympathize with the union...I really do. They're being dicked over the same way most of the middle class is being dicked over, and in particular they're being dicked over by dishonest and irresponsible Republican leaders. Basically, here's what happened:
Long, long ago, in a governor's mansion far, far away, a happy little Republican named George Pataki had the brilliant realization that people like you better when you give them stuff, and in particular rich people like you when you give them stuff, and they tend to give you stuff in return. "Awesome!" little Pataki thought to himself. "I can make everybody happy!" So he frittered away a massive amount of money...some tax cuts here, some salary increases and pension contribution reductions there, and pretty soon he was deep in Republican Red (I just thought of that...see, Republican states are "red," and so is a "deep, gaping accounting deficit," and Republicans these days are retarded and have the fiscal responsibility of a teenage valley girl, so, see, "Republican Red"...haha...I'm a genius! Go forth. Use it).
However, to his great surprise, Mr. Pataki suddenly found himself with a pension funding crunch several years later. "Hmm..." he thought to himself, "well, we can't actually take money from the people who have it because they are the ones who are going to elect me when I seek higher office...if only there were a group I don't like anyway that can't really do anything about it if I screw them over..."
...and thus you end up in the nice little pissing-match-I-mean-contract-negotiation we find ourselves in. The strike is basically a "fuck you too." The "fuck you" that inspired the "fuck you too" was first and foremost trying to take the budget shortfall out of union workers' pockets, and secondly drastically increasing pension contributions in the MTA's offer for no apparent reason other than to piss the union off. Knowing a "fuck you" when he saw it, Toussaint invoked the one reciprocal "fuck you" he had at his disposal: a transit strike.
So was it justified? Well, sort of. The union, as I said, had gotten major pension contribution rollbacks several years earlier. And they don't really have a right to complain about the retirement age being bumped up from 55 since, really, who the fuck else gets a retirement age that low? And they're paid pretty well.
At the same time, they were being asked to pony up for something that wasn't their fault, and what they were asking for was essentially pocket change compared to other shit (like tax cuts) the government had happily paid for, not to mention the fact that the MTA was running a nice little surplus. That would piss me off too. How would you like it if some wealthy douchebag came in and tried to take money from you because a) it would play well to his political base, and b) because he and other wealthy douchebags had fucked up the budget in the first place. I'd be goddamn livid.
However, it's fairly obvious at this point that striking was absolutely the wrong move. It's now cost the union several million in fines and driven public opinion sharply...and I mean SHARPLY...against it. They've pissed everybody off and gotten nothing for their trouble. It seems all that money would have been much better spent on a public relations campaign. Granted, even that might not have worked since modern America seems to believe that mismanagement is a desirable trait in a public official so long as he won't let gay people get married and that an economy doesn't work unless those without a college education get ass-raped as much as humanly possible. Because hell...if an Indian guy living on dirt under a thatched roof can live off $1.25 a day, so can our workers! If they don't like it, they should...umm...start an entrepreneurial venture marketing...their dirt...in their free time after their 12 hour shift...and make money so they're not poor...because see they must have chosen to be poor...or something. Yeah. Go Jesus! Support our troops.
Anyway...seems to be the death throes of a fading union movement. Robber baron 20's, here we come! Child labor laws are for pussies! Etc. But yeah...I'd be pissed if I lived in New York too. I mean, your life sucks...why should those fuckers get to make your life suck _more_ just because their life sucks too? You should at least get to make their life suck somehow...seems only fair...
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2 comments:
To be clear, should I assume that part of the "justification" you believe the union had for the strikes was:
a) pensions weren't really that big a deal (despite the fact that it's bankrupting private companies left and right)?
b) the government's already spent money willy-nilly elsewhere so why not on continued free health insurance and almost free retirement plans for transit workers? (Democratic retort to Republican overspending: Spend more!)
c) Pension shortfalls aren't their fault so why should they pay? (huh??)
d) The pension issue was an unnecessary "fuck you" to the union? Nevermind that the lower retirement age clearly puts pensions on the table. When you cave to everything else the union wants, don't see why it's irrelevant to continue to try to manage pension costs. I agree the initial savings aren't that high. There'd be hella more savings if the age were bumped to 62 and the City didn't give carte blanche 10.5% raises to 34,000 workers. Should we talk about that again?
In any case, the union leaders are douchebags for ordering a strike. The workers are pissed off for any number of reasons, possibly because most of them work underground for hours being rude to stupid people who are rude back (kind of a chicken and egg problem).
The bottom line is that, as more people retire than start work, pension costs are going to continue to balloon. We can either pretend it's not going to happen (Social Security? Social Security's fine!), spend till we drop and go bankrupt and then either tell everyone looking for a pension and benefits to go fuck themselves (Delphi, parts maker for GM) or go beg the government for help (insert your favorite airline here). Or we can actually start dealing with the structural problem instead of mixing it with every other spending issue under the sun that you don't like Take your pick:
"Hey, someone got a tax cut! And I hear you're paying teachers slightly less than crap this year! I want free retirement!"
"Look, the MTA has a surplus! Gimme!"
"Debt costs are going up! I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that short-term rates have gone from 1% to 4.25% in the last 18 months! All I know is it's not my fault! Where's my retirement?!"
"Bloomberg's a billionaire and I'm not! I should get more of _something_ for that!"
So yeah, I hope the fines dry up at least this one union (acting against its parent union's advice, mind you). Maybe eventually more unions will learn that the market doesn't work on the "Ask, and ye shall receive" principle. In the "Robber Baron 20s", no one in their right minds would take the jobs that people eventually had to unionize to fix. When a city's dominant response to a striking union is "They want WHAT?!", one has to believe we're a long way from there.
a) Pensions _weren't_ that big a deal in terms of the contract itself. We're talking about a few year's contract that will be renegotiated in 2008. You have a surplus, and pension costs over the next few years will cost at most about $20 million (which is peanuts compared to other Pataki giveaways). Why are you provoking a strike over this, especially now?
b) No, get it right...the Republican credo is: spend willy-nilly on your friends, and then throw up your hands and claim there's no money for social programs (like low-wage workers' retirement). Social programs are not on the table if other unjustifiable spending isn't either. It's Pataki's mess, and it's not up to the TWU to shoulder the burden of fixing it.
c) See b. General funding shortfalls aren't their fault, so why should they have to pay for it?
d) It's not a lower retirement age. It's a bump in the existing retirement age, i.e., a change to the status quo. They were demanding things stay the same. It was the city who said, "Hey, by the way, we spent all your money, so could you go ahead and retire later? That would be awesome."
The bottom line is that it's bullshit to create an artificial spending crunch by blowing your budget on totally irresponsible items (Bush tax cut, anyone?) and then ask the lowest-end workers to shoulder it. Total, unequivocal bullshit. If you want to reign in pension spending, you do it directly. And hey, if you had the money you'd blown on other shit, you could easily soften the blow by spreading out the program rollbacks over a longer period. Or hell, you could even use it to cover this generation's pensions while you switch the entire system over to 401k's (because, I agree, pensions are stupid).
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