Tuesday - December 20, 2005

Merry Christmas from the Union

(via boortz)

If you live in New York City, then congratulations....you have now been seriously inconvenienced. Why is that? Over 30,000 transit workers...upset with the city’s latest proposal on wages and benefits...walked off the job today. Merry Christmas, right? Gridlock won’t even begin to describe how much of a mess New York will be with all of the subways and buses shut down.  Oh, and the cost to the New York City economy?  Somewhere between $400 and $700 million.

According to union boss Roger Toussaint, “transit workers are tired of being under-appreciated and disrespected.” And just what does this government workers union find so “disrespectful?” Annual raises of between 3 and 4 percent. The city wants to raise the age transit workers become eligible for their pension from 55 to 62. And just how much do the striking workers earn? Between $47,000 and $55,000 a year. Not bad work if you can get it. But as always with government unions, it’s never enough.

So now they’re on strike. According to the governor and the mayor, it’s an illegal strike. If you know anything about unions and the union mentality, the law doesn’t matter; the employer doesn’t matter.  All that matters is the union.  Mayor Bloomberg is threatening to dock the union workers two days pay for every day they stay out on strike.  That would be absolutely beautiful, if he could make it stick.  Fat chance.  Not only do unions like to ignore the law, but politicians like to enable them in that endeavor. You can expect a judge to order them back on the job. We’ll see if that works.  If it doesn’t, perhaps the city might look into firing them all...and hiring replacements. That should get their attention and would teach them not to bite the hand that feeds them.

Merry Chirstmas New York!

Posted by Drew458     on 12/20/2005 at 10:06 AM   
Filed Under: • Unions-Labor •  
• Comments (10) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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