Strike!

Some of you know what’s happening in NYC these days. For those who don’t, here’s the situation:

At 3AM this morning, the TWU Local 100 (transit workers union) voted overwhelming in favor of and commenced a city wide transit strike, effectively shutting down the subway and bus system and dealing a crippling blow to the people and economy of New York City.

Now, I’m gonna try to be fair to both sides in talking about this. First the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority): they have a huge upper and middle management division that drains funds from where they need to go; fight over every penny in contract negotiations; take forever to fix issues in the transit system; raise fares and cry poverty at regular intervals; basically have been accused by a large number of people both inside and outside the agency of bad treatment of workers; have a history of bad spending decisions.

Next: the TWU. Yes, their salaries are not the greatest, but they have full health benefits, pensions, tons of paid holidays and overtime available; many people attribute the issues with the bus and subway system (such as late trains, missing busses, etc.) to a lack of strong work ethic among the workers; they are basically acting selfish, not to mention that they are breaking the law, since it is illegal for state workers to strike and will end up paying more for it.

My take is simple. The TWU’s concerns should be noted, but they can’t get everything they want. True, the MTA did have a large surplus this year, but not all of it is for the TWU workers, since they only represent some of the workers in the MTA. The TWU needs to realize that a strike doesn’t only hurt the company they work for, but over 7 million people in New York CityNew York City seem to be extremely severe. According to most sources, the total dollar amount of the current sticking points is about $5 million dollars. This is not a lot of money for the city to be closed down over and since there are about 34,000 people in the TWU, this amounts to about $147.05 per person. and the surrounding area. Additionally, the end of the Christmas shopping season is upon us, and the economic repercussions on businesses all over the 5 boroughs of

I could go on and on about both sides of the situation, but it comes down to this: the strike is hurting everyone and the TWU will ultimately pay more than they could hope to get.

Wisdom of the Day: Go back to work; oh and Sandra Endo is awesome! (so, what are you doing later?)