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From the WSJ - Best of the Web Today - December 20, 2005
Crush This Union
We won't be traveling today, because of "a blatantly illegal act of economic sabotage by a union so selfish that it is willing to destroy one of the most important business weeks in the city in a last-ditch attempt to preserve privileges that most private sector employees can only dream of--like the ability to retire at age 55 with a full pension, or the ability to not to contribute at all to health insurance costs," as the New York Sun aptly describes it.
On calling the illegal strike, Roger Toussaint, the French-sounding boss of the Transport Workers Union, declared, "This is a fight over dignity and respect on the job, a concept that is very alien to the M.T.A. [Metropolitan Transportation Authority]. Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected." Well, we're unfailingly polite to bus drivers and subway conductors, but somehow we don't think that's what Toussaint has in mind. "Respect" is a euphemism for "greed."
The Sun offers some good advice to state officials:
If the MTA moves even a scintilla toward the union's negotiating position as the result of this strike, it would reward the union's illegal behavior and send to the dozens of other unions who do business with the state, the city, and the public authorities a message of appeasement--that if you want a better contract, go on strike, even if it is against the law. . . . The right move for the MTA now--the only move, if it is going to avoid a strike every time a contract is up for renegotiation--is to take an extremely hard line with the Transport Workers Union Local 100. As a first step, the MTA could refuse to negotiate with this union until the workers are back on the job. If that fails, the authority can begin hiring and training permanent replacement workers. The strikers mustn't be permitted to escape the full penalties of the Taylor Law, which include docking workers' pay and jailing the union leaders.
Over the long run, Sun columnist John Avlon notes, many of these scofflaw workers could be replaced by machines:
Already, trains in Paris, Cairo, and Calcutta operate with computerized or automated systems. In Paris, the Meteor Project was launched in 1998, with an automatic piloting system that controls the train line's traffic, regulates speed, manages alarm devices, and allows for traffic of automatic and traditional conductor trains on the same line. There have been no serious accidents reported since this system deployed in the late 1990s, and more than a billion people have been transported. Computers make the trains run on time and they don't threaten to walk off the job. All of us are replaceable, but some are more quickly replaceable than others.
New York's Gov. George Pataki, though not seeking re-election next year, is said to be eyeing a presidential run in 2008. As John Fund notes in today's Political Diary (subscribe here):
The rest of the country will be watching to see whether Mr. Pataki has the nerve to face down a rebel union that is sowing havoc in the country's financial nerve center. In 1981 a determined President Ronald Reagan stood up to the striking air traffic controllers union and set the tone for the remainder of his presidency. The governor could do worse than to read up on that history.
If you live in "the rest of the country," count yourself lucky, for you almost certainly have a car. Spiking gas prices may be an annoyance, but at least you know you can always get where you want to go.
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