The Chronic Curmudgeon

First of all, this strike's illegal. Even the TWU's parent union concedes that, and wants the local to go back to work. Bigger than that, though, I guess I have a real problem with the union's demands and the reason they went out on strike in the first place. First of all, they're all pissy because they're being asked to pick up some of their health care costs? What the hell? I don't know when the last time was that any of the heads of the transit workers union looked at anyone else's jobs... but just about everyone in America lucky enough to have health benefits has to pay some amount of co-pay or payroll deduction as part of the deal. The whole "entitled to free health care" attitude being displayed by the TWU isn't just arrogant, it's short-sighted -- go ahead guys, force MTA to keep up with skyrocketing costs and paying 100% of your health care... how long you figure that can last before they gotta start cutting jobs to recoup costs?

Worse still to me is the union's infuriating demand for an 8% raise annually. 8%? Guaranteed? Every year? No matter what your job performance or what economic conditions are? What the hell kind of reality are these guys living in? I'd love to get an 8% raise annually. Hell, I'd like to have any raise at all guaranteed to me. But that's not reality -- not in my job, and not in any other job I know. Demanding an 8% raise annually is almost like asking for bon-bons to be placed in every break room, and a day spa massage (happy ending optional) for every employee daily... anywhere else in reality, a guaranteed 8% raise annually would be an unbelievable luxury, yet our transit guys feel they're entitled to it? Boys, you're just not that special.

Finally, there's the matter of the economic impact on the city that this strike is taking. I don't mean the big businesses or the tourist industry or the fat cats; they'll survive just fine. But there were thousands of small businesses that couldn't open today because their workers couldn't get to work. There were hundreds of thousands of people who don't have the luxury of being on salary... if they don't get to work, they don't get paid -- and if they don't get paid, they can't take care of their families. The folks who get hurt with stuff like this aren't fat cats like me who can always just work from home or even miss a day or three and still get paid; it's the little guys who get hit hardest -- the very blue collar, working class folks that the TWU claims they are, and is trying to get sympathy from. The concept of trying to win sympathy from people by givin' them the old Zed from Pulp Fiction treatment is about as tactically sound as French defense tactics in any war since 1800.

Not to mention that today it was cold as Ann Coulter's, um, boob out today... making millions of people walk miles in below freezing weather is just an assholish thing to do. (And yes, my Minnesota friends, 20something IS cold out. We're near the ocean here, which means the air is more humid, which means it sinks into your bones faster and feels a hell of a lot colder a hell of a lot faster than lower temps do in the comparitively drier midwestern air. Given a choice between 20 degrees here or 2 degrees back in Minnesota, I'll start saying "you betcha" again and extending my Oooooos when I talk. 20 degrees in NYC is butt-ugly COLD.)

So... here I am, a labor guy at heart, a guy whose natural sympathies lie with unions and their members... and I'm finding myself solidly in the pro-MTA, anti-TWU court. While I try to figure out how that happened, you should try and count the number of slobbery self-loving stories the New York media produces until the strike ends.