Strike Out
Suddenly, with the question of a strike by the transit workers going down to the wire, New Yorkers are scrambling to make contingency plans in the event that the system 7 million of us use every day suddenly goes out of service. The police are preparing to redirect traffic flows, the mayor is getting his cot set up, and companies are scrounging for hotel rooms for employees who will be unable to commute. It's hard to see the logic of the transit workers actually calling a strike. Doing so would hurt them more over the long run than it would hurt the city. But they could end up losing in more ways than one. Even if they now accept the MTA's terms, forgoing the 24% raise they were demanding, they will have, by bringing the city to the precipice, focused in the public's mind some awkward questions about the way the city's buses and subways are run.
Consider their pay demands. The transit workers union has insisted on a 24% increase over three years, compared to the 5% over two years the MTA is offering. Union leaders claim they are only asking for pay rates commensurate with their peers in other mass transit networks in the region, like the Long Island Railroad or Metro-North, but all they have succeeded in doing is calling the public's attention to a pay scale that is already generous by the standards of many New Yorkers. A subway-train operator starts at $52,644 a year, more than double the starting salaries of police officers, fire fighters, and trash collectors. Instead of encouraging the public to ask why they should get the "meager" raise the MTA has proposed, the union actually has New Yorkers wondering why their starting salaries are so high even without the raise.
Similar questions are being raised by the fight over work rules. The union is agitated over an MTA proposal to combine the positions of train driver and conductor and to operate some trains without conductors at all. It turns out that such debate only makes New Yorkers wonder why the subway system still needs conductors. Washington's modern Metrorail system relies on computers to run the trains while a single operator makes announcements and opens and closes doors. Even that single operator looks superfluous when compared to the newest line of the Paris Metro, which will be operated entirely by computers.
Again with health care costs. The MTA hasn't even proposed changing the system for current employees; it is willing to continue paying their full premiums under a new contract. In exchange, it would ask new hires to chip in 2% of their wages for health care. While the union portrays this as an unpardonable sin - the president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, Roger Toussaint, characterizes the MTA position on insurance premiums as "demanding that we give up our unborn" - New Yorkers are left wondering why they have to pay a portion of their own premiums, if they even have health benefits, and also subsidize a generous package for transit workers.
These three strikes would be bad enough for the union, but it is also inflicting collateral damage on some of its supporters. The executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Bhairavi Desai, was quoted recently in the Daily News as telling the 6,700 cabbies in her group that they should refuse to pick up additional passengers if they're already carrying fares, as emergency rules would allow them to do during a strike. "We're not going to scab for the city," she says, leaving New Yorkers to wonder why they should restrict the sale of medallions and regulate cheap vans in a way that gives taxi drivers a corner on hacking.
As illogical as it seems that the union will walk off the job at midnight tonight, there's a basic rule in newspaper work - never predict a strike. The state's Taylor Law, which would cost strikers two days' pay for every one day of a walkout, all but guarantees that if they do strike, fines will eat up any pay increase they would win. But transit workers are circulating literature on how to shut down the subways safely. They've already lost. They have just reminded New Yorkers that the time is ripe for a discussion about how to run public transportation more efficiently and affordably. This is a terrific moment to begin.
