Strike!

No … I’m not talking baseball … the NY Transit workers strike. Unions are getting ridiculous. I’m not just talking about the Transit workers union in NY, but fairly much all unions across the board … they seem to be in it to kill the companies rather than protect their members.

I don’t recall if it was Eastern Airlines or United that the Head of the Union stated in an interview that his goal was to bring down the company … and he did … and you know what … all the union members found themselves out of work … THAT’S what I call looking after the members best interests … yup … I’m sure that all those un-employed mechanics, pilots, stewardesses and everyone else in the company REALLY appreciated that help.

Now I believe that in many instances (particularly in the airlines) management plays a large part of the problem as well … but when you start to put some of the union demands in perspective … well they start to sound like spoiled brats that always get their way.

Presently NYC Transit workers make, on average, a better annual wage than most police officers and teachers. For a job that requires less education (a transit worker position requires a High School diploma (or, I believe, a GED) while law enforcement generally requires 2 years of college and teachers require a full bachelor degree at the least) and is often less demanding.

But they want more money … Of course they’ve been offered a raise (between 3 and 4%) – just not a large enough raise in their minds. And they don’t want to pay more toward their pension (currently they pay 2% … the Transit Authority wants them to pay 6% … 6% is better than most workers in this country are offered.) … and from what I can see that increase would ONLY apply to new hires and only for the first 10 years of employment.

They cite the large surplus of funds that the Transit Authority has … some $1 Billion (45% of which is earmarked for the Transit Workers Pension Fund) … but that surplus is the result of tax money, not increased Transit Worker work … they didn’t DO more to earn that surplus there was simply more collected in city TAXES than originally predicted when the budget was made out.

The Union’s view on this is simple … since the government collected more taxes than they expected then they should give more of that tax money to the transit workers … no they shouldn’t lower taxes or do anything else that might benefit the people that actually PAID those taxes with that extra money … no … that wouldn’t be right … no … better to give it to the union members who came in and worked the same 8 hour shift with all the mandatory breaks and such … after all … they WORKED … um … wait a tick … actually they did the same thing they would have done if there was a $1 billion dollar short fall because the city collected LESS taxes than it expected …. And you can bet they wouldn’t take a pay cut or anything in THAT situation…

Of course … you also have to keep in mind that the strike is, in fact, illegal. “The strike by the 33,000-member Transport Workers Union is illegal under a New York state law that bars public employees from walking out.” [Jail Threat Ups Ante for NYC Union Heads] … mind you in the mind of a Union Leader … the LAW isn’t important, no, they’re more interested in the rule of the mob, not the rule of law.

Currently the employees on strike are loosing 2 days pay for every day that they remain on strike and a judge has ordered fines on the union of $1 million a day.

Every day that this strike continues it puts more stress on the people of NY … not the Transit Authority or the Transit Unions (though both of those parties are loosing money) but on the citizens of New York … a city that relies heavily on it’s mass transit, a city where some people do not have viable alternatives to get to work some of whom may loose jobs or pay because some union leader in a suit and tie living on the sweat of others decided that a 4% raise wasn’t enough.

Personally … fire the lot and start the replacements at 60% of the current salary … then take that extra 40% and give it to the police departments, since they’re the ones working over time through this transportation crisis.

The times that we needed unions are long gone … they’ve grown fat in the excesses and only take, and take, and take. They are a lead weight on the gossamer balloon of the economy and we really need to cut them loose before they drag us down.

The biggest problem is that the unions have grown too big … the have gone from small organizations whose leaders were the working men … the leader was ‘ole Gus’ working on lathe 231 … and Gus had the interests of the other guys in the shop at heart because he worked next to them, sweated with them … he saw how things effected them. Now, many union leaders may never have even DONE the job that the union represents … they are lawyers, not workers, and many of them don’t have a single clue about the concerns of the members … they don’t know the names of the members … they don’t know their families … and they don’t give a rat’s ass about how this strike is effecting the members or how their demands will effect the over all picture in the long term.

Thinking long term … realizing that constantly taking more and more will eventually end up with a situation where there’s nothing LEFT to take … where you’ve taken to the point that you’ve taken everything, and lost everything because the people that you were taking FROM collapsed and disappeared leaving you holding an pension from a fund that is bankrupt.

Some myths say that a vampire that completely drains his victim dies with them … their bodies slowing and falling into that cold empty chasm of death … I think they were speaking of unions and, hopefully, predicting their fall.