$55,000 per year Bus Drivers: Take a hike!

[amicus]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/21/1447226

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg condemns a strike by 33,000 transit workers that has shut down the country's largest public transportation system for the first time in 25 years. We play an excerpt of Bloomberg's press conference, hear New York City commuters and transit workers explaining their reasons for the strike and we speak with Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez who has been closely covering the strike. [includes rush transcript]

On Tuesday, 33,000 New York City transit workers went on strike shutting down the country's largest public transportation system for the first time in 25 years. More than 7 million commuters were left to find alternative ways to get around the city. The Transport Worker's Union board voted to strike after a 12-hour round of intense negotiations between Peter S. Kalikow, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's chairman, and Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the TWU. The two sides could not reach an agreement on a number of issues including wages, pensions and disciplinary procedures.

The strike was announced yesterday morning at around 3 AM by Toussaint. He said that the strike was "a fight over dignity and respect on the job - a concept that is very alien to the MTA." Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been urging the Union to give in to the MTA's demands, called the strike selfish and illegal.
• Michael Bloomberg, New York City, press conference, December 20, 2005.

Late Tuesday, State Supreme Court Judge Theodore Jones leveled a fine of $1 million a day on the union, charging that it was in violation of the Taylor law. The Taylor Law is a state statute that prohibits strikes by public employees.


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/21/1447231

As for this being a class issue, the TWU workers make an average salary of $55,000. This puts them squarely in New York's middle class. So this is not a class issue at all. The only way it will be a class issue is if the governor and the mayor do the right thing under the law and make sure they get workers into these jobs right away, because New Yorkers need their public transportation system running.
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Fire the Bastards!

The "Liberal" news media is already making references to former President Reagan and his firing of air traffic controllers in the 1980's.

Union Labor is out of control across the country, with auto workers also making on the order of $60,000 per year, plus full medical, pension and retirement benefits.

Unions, if they ever had any use at all, have outlived that purpose in the 21st century.

Politically important to the left as Union Labor votes 90% democrat, Unions should be, like the old European Guilds, relegated to the dim dark past.

It was once thought that by an 'apprenticeship' program, organized labor could provide skilled workers in increasingly more complex jobs.

They have become what the guilds were, privileged sanctuaries for the incompetent, who limit entry into a field to keep labor costs high and penalize the consumer.

I hope the Mayor of New York, if he is responsible, will fire all those union members and replace them with market value workers.

That's called Justice.


amicus...

 

[amicus]

Guess I should have expected that not even the 'usual suspects' of the left would defend a pay raise for a $55,000 a year bus driver.

Oh, well....


amicus...

 

[Liar]

Guess I should have expected that not even the 'usual suspects' of the left would defend a pay raise for a $55,000 a year bus driver.

Oh, well....


amicus...

Still looking for my currency calculator.

 

[davidwatts]

Guess I should have expected that not even the 'usual suspects' of the left would defend a pay raise for a $55,000 a year bus driver.

Oh, well....


amicus...

Not a usual suspect but a strike like this hurts the working class hard, as they have no options as to how to get to work. The people that count on the system to get them around are the ones that get my sympathy.

For the folks in areas outside of NYC or other major metropolitian areas, while 55K is a lot of money anywhere, it doesn't have quite the same clout in NYC as it would in Kentucky. The cost of living is absurd, as well as the taxes, because unfortunately NYC, like NYS residents, have the honor of shoveling a lot more tax dollars into the national kitty than they get back (Isn't that right Ted "the slug" Stevens and Bobby "pointy hat" Byrd?).

Not sure if I want to hop on the bus if a 'market value' worker like Grandpa Joad or Mulely Graves is behind the wheel though...

 

[gauchecritic]

Yeah, sack the shiftless idle bastards. However much they get paid it's obviously too much. Then all the itinerant, immigrant, non english speaking taxi drivers could have their jobs for about $10 an hour.

 

[davidwatts]

Yeah, sack the shiftless idle bastards. However much they get paid it's obviously too much. Then all the itinerant, immigrant, non english speaking taxi drivers could have their jobs for about $10 an hour.

Well, you could offer $10 an hour and see how many show up. If you get more applicants than you need, tell them the 'market value' is now $5 an hour. Wait them out and they'll offer to drive the thing all day for free in exchange for letting them sleep in it.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

What Would Reagan Do?

By STEVEN MALANGA
Copyright Wall Street Journal
December 21, 2005

A radicalized union that twice before has tried and partially succeeded in shutting down America's largest city is once again holding New York hostage. Using such aggressive tactics, or the threat of them, over the last 40 years, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) has won for its members a wage and benefits package that far outshines what most blue-collar workers in the private sector can earn, including retirement at age 55 with half salary and cost-of-living adjustments.

If New York state and city officials are ever to stop the TWU's recurring blackmail, which has burdened taxpayers and riders with enormous costs, they should use this illegal strike to impose the Reagan solution. Faced with a militant public-sector union that violated the law with a walk-out, President Reagan dismissed thousands of air traffic controllers in 1981 and rebuilt the nation's air traffic system with a new work force. New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) could do the same by terminating striking workers and hiring new ones, because its relatively unskilled unionized jobs are highly sought-after, with over 30 applicants for each position.

Founded in 1934 originally to represent workers in the private sector, the TWU was one of the radical unions that formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations. An early president, Mike Quill, was a member of the Communist Party who reveled in his nickname, "Red Mike." Though Quill quit the party when it refused to back an early transit fare increase (on the grounds that it would hurt the working class), he remained a militant power for decades, especially after New York Mayor Robert Wagner misguidedly signed an executive order giving public employees the right to organize and bargain collectively in 1958. Quill began a predictable cycle: Every few years, during the critical Christmas shopping and tourist season, the TWU threatens to shut down New York if officials don't acquiesce to its demands.

The union first struck on New Year's Day, 1966, John Lindsay's first day as mayor, demanding a 30% wage hike, a four-day, 32-hour work week and retirement after 25 years service. Workers stayed out for 13 contentious days, and though public opinion mostly opposed the strike, in the end the union won a rich settlement, estimated at some $70 million (about $400 million in today's dollars), or twice what city negotiators had originally offered. In 1980, with the city still recovering from the fiscal crisis of the late 1970s, the union struck again, this time for 11 days, and when a judge imposed fines on workers, they simply upped their demands to cover the costs, winning 18% wage increases over two years.

Today TWU bus drivers earn, on average, $63,000 annually, while subway motormen make $54,000 and subway cleaners $40,000. Workers get full health benefits, make no contributions to insurance premiums and can retire after 25 years of service or at age 55. The MTA has an unfunded pension liability of $1 billion. Given the strike, one might think the MTA is asking for significant givebacks of these perks. Hardly. It asked to push the retirement age back to 62 for new workers but dropped that demand and is now merely asking that they contribute 6% of their pre-tax salaries toward their pension for their first 10 years on the job, as well as pay 1% of salary for health insurance. By contrast, the TWU demanded that the MTA lower retirement age to 50 for its current workers and grant 8% wage increases over the next three years.

In heavily pro-union New York, these kinds of demands are not only taken seriously but often prevail. Nearly three-quarters of all government workers in the Greater New York area are unionized, the highest level of public-sector unionization of any major metropolitan region. With so much muscle, they typically earn 15% more on average in wages than private sector workers, according to a recent study by New York's Citizens Budget Commission. When porcine benefits packages are added into the mix, total compensation is often 50% greater. The cost of all this has become a huge burden. New York City's pension and benefits costs have soared 60%, or about $4 billion, in just four years. The transit system's pension costs alone have tripled since 2002, while the bill for health benefits is up 40%.

Public unions rarely have to strike to win such benefits. The vast and growing political power they wield in state legislatures and city halls is usually enough to swing contract negotiations in their favor. But the TWU has always been a militant organization, whose leaders, egged on by the membership, seem engaged in a game of one-upmanship even with other unions.

But now New York officials should take a page from President Reagan's playbook: The MTA should start sending out termination letters to striking workers for breaking the law, and hiring a new work force -- including offering jobs to current workers, but on terms set down by the MTA.

While rebuilding the work force, transit officials could unleash the privately owned van services and bus lines, which they currently prohibit from operating along public bus lines, to protect the MTA's and the TWU's monopoly. The MTA should begin handing out long-term contracts for these operators to provide alternate, competitive services on a permanent basis.

New York officials should also privatize big chunks of the transit system, as many other cities in the U.S. and abroad are doing. For the past 50 years New York has unfortunately moved in the opposite direction, preferring to take over private lines and to house transit operations in a gigantic state agency, the MTA, or to offer no-bid franchises to a few politically connected and heavily subsidized private lines -- all in the mistaken belief that having workers on the public payrolls would prohibit strikes and make the system more reliable.

Elsewhere, transit authorities are more like outsourcing contractors than operators, bidding out lines and overseeing routes. Denver and San Diego have contracted 35% of their bus routes. But perhaps the best model is London, where, spurred by Margaret Thatcher, officials began an aggressive transit privatization program nearly 20 years ago. London's bus lines, though designed by the city, are now operated by some 40 private companies. Only on such a model can New York begin to rein in its high costs and stop repeated union blackmail.

Mr. Malanga, contributing editor to the City Journal, is the author of "The New New Left" (Ivan R. Dee, 2005).

 

[amicus]

Well, y'know, your not so subtle criticism of the market as it applies wages is taken as I take most of what you say.

A few years back, doing talk radio, a three hour show, I netted between three and five hundred dollars a day and I did get a 'free lunch & coctails', courtesy of a sponsor.

But a good many years before that, I did the kind of labor Americans won't do any more, picking crops in the field, beans, strawberries, apples, pears and assorted other fruits and veggies...for .50 cents an hour and glad to get it as a 10 year old.

My first job in radio was for a buck an hour, midnight to 6am...and there were people lined up for that job.

I suppose if you have even minimal understanding of how the market place functions you can realize that buyer and seller, employee and worker, are free to set their own acceptance level.

But of course, you want minimum wage, living wage, benefits, health care and probably maternity leave. You want someone to take care of you outside your own ability to earn the wage you desire.

I understand that. I also understand why union members will not easily give up what they have bargained for over the years.

But many continuously complain about outsourcing jobs, mexican labor, foreign products on the shelves and in the car lots, not realizing, apparently, that your push for higher and higher wages and benefits for union workers have increased the cost of living for all while benefitting just a few workers.

The market place for labor ebbs and flows for many reasons. To restate an example I used before of a mortician passing away in a small town in Montana, within a few days, other morticians across the country will appear, as if by magic, to fill the job.

That is the free market place at work. And it works so well.

But I suppose you would advocate a controlled market where the government assigned jobs for morticians and such and doctors and nurses, in a place with socialized medicine.

I like freedom, you like slavery.

I prefer my outlook to yours, anyday.


amicus...

 

[amicus]

Roxanne, thank you for the article.

amicus...

 

[BlackShanglan]

I was listening to a report on NPR about the decimation of the garment trade in San Francisco following NAFTA opening of cheap labor markets. I was torn on the issue. On the one hand, I don't like to see sweatshop labor in unregulated economies become the norm. On the other hand, the reporter mentioned by way of comparison that the garment workers in the 1970's had made as much as $20/hour under a union system. $20/hour in the 1970's?! Dear God, no wonder the factory owners moved as soon as they had a chance. That's simply an insane wage.

Top award, however, has to go to some of the unionized dock workers who helped shut down California ports last year or so ago. If I recall correctly, the stats that the paper listed for the jobs they were fighting to keep were something like $120,000 per year for a job that included at least two full months of vacation and - here's the best part - could have been completely eliminated very simply by accepting the information electronically from the shippers. In fact, they had the information electronically, but the union had, as part of their strike, insisted that those job positions be preserved so that companies would have to continue to pay people $120,000 doing ten months per year of work manually entering data that didn't need to be done that way anyway.

I have respect for unions when they protect the rights of workers. However, that sort of behavior only destroys people's faith in their good will.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

I guess dignity comes high, these days.

 

[Liar]

I like freedom, you like slavery.

Quite the opposite.

Quothe davidw:

Well, you could offer $10 an hour and see how many show up. If you get more applicants than you need, tell them the 'market value' is now $5 an hour. Wait them out and they'll offer to drive the thing all day for free in exchange for letting them sleep in it.

Is that freedom or slavery, amicus? But I don't know why I keep on replyng to your blurts as if they were anything but poorly backed up soundbites.

 

[Xelebes]

While I do see 55,000 a year for a bus driver to be abit high, I have to remind myself that cost of living is lower here and the average income is 29,000 in Canadian dollars which I take is lower than poverty level in the US.

 

[amicus]

Quite the opposite.

Quothe davidw:
Is that freedom or slavery, amicus? But I don't know why I keep on replyng to your blurts as if they were anything but poorly backed up soundbites.

Ah, Liar, Soundbites are everything in a limited market.

My daughter, who spent years in college, raising kids at the same time, got her first job as a psychologist, at $35,000 per....maybe she should have joined a union?

If you don't view unions as an outgrowth of the 'guild' system, a practice of limiting employment and maximizing mediocrity, then perhaps you should read some more.

amicus...

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Yeah. I want to enjoy the freedom enjoyed by the West Virginia miners before they unionized. They were free to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, with all their pay going to the company to cover the cost of their food and housing, which the company also owned.

That's freedom, brother! Bring back the nineteenth century.

 

[davidwatts]

Ah, Liar, Soundbites are everything in a limited market.

My daughter, who spent years in college, raising kids at the same time, got her first job as a psychologist, at $35,000 per....maybe she should have joined a union?

If you don't view unions as an outgrowth of the 'guild' system, a practice of limiting employment and maximizing mediocrity, then perhaps you should read some more.

amicus...

Perhaps the 35K was the market value of that type of "work".

It might be interesting to ask one of the frozen masses waddling over the Brooklyn Bridge this morning whether psychologists should be paid more than bus drivers (or police or firemen). A bus driver is responsible for the health and welfare of a whole lot of people as well. That doesn't mean you throw bags of money at them, but c'mon, you have to pay them more than a psychologist.

Unions are corrupt and self-serving, and it was never my intention to start holding themup as paragons of virtue, but it was the 'market value' theory of employment that made them neccessary in the first place.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Yeah. I want to enjoy the freedom enjoyed by the West Virginia miners before they unionized. They were free to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, with all their pay going to the company to cover the cost of their food and housing, which the company also owned.

'tis true... but perhaps unions have, as Amicus suggests, outlived their usefulness... eventually, any system or bureaucracy created to correct an injustice will inevitably swing the pendulum to the opposite direction in some way... affirmative action has done so, and so have unions... there are no perfect systems or solutions <shrug> and as many people as these systems once helped, there are now nearly as many (perhaps more, who knows the real numbers?) that these systems hurt.

 

[Liar]

If you don't view unions as an outgrowth of the 'guild' system, a practice of limiting employment and maximizing mediocrity, then perhaps you should read some more.

Did I say anything about unions? You know so little and assume so much. I've read about guilds and I've read about unions thankyouverymuch. The closest thing to the old-time guilds that we have today are not unions, but possibly bransch organisations. Unions are a parallell phenomena brought on by industialization and the rise of mass employers, not an outgrowth of a diminishing old guild system of more-or-less freelancing one- or few-man enterprises of skilled laborers. They have correlating points in history, but that only makes it cause-and-effect to a way too interpreting mind.

Now, that doesn't stop unions from being corrupt, buerocratic behemoths that often have forgotten what they are supposed to do. But guilds, they are not. And outdated, if they do what they should, they are not.

If thay did what they should or not in the case of the NY bus drivers, I'm not at liberty to say. Cuz I have no more facts than the hazy reports in this thread.

Regarding your daughter: How the blazes should I know? What's her workload? What's her responsibilities? What are the risks involved in her job? Much overtime? Much odd hours? Big or small employer? Career opportunities? Location? Free lunch? Living costs?

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I hope they fire every one of them. A strike is one thing. An illegal straike another. But to do it on christmas so you can shaft the most people? Fire em all and start over agan at square one with non union labor in the transit sector.

 

[R. Richard]

The New York Post reports that letters posted to the transit workers web site are some four to one AGAINST the strike. Apparently, the citizens of NYC are not too pleased with the strike.

 

[LadyJeanne]

'tis true... but perhaps unions have, as Amicus suggests, outlived their usefulness... eventually, any system or bureaucracy created to correct an injustice will inevitably swing the pendulum to the opposite direction in some way... affirmative action has done so, and so have unions... there are no perfect systems or solutions <shrug> and as many people as these systems once helped, there are now nearly as many (perhaps more, who knows the real numbers?) that these systems hurt.

Both my parents are union workers. Until companies are willing to voluntarily forgo the bottom line in order to provide their employees with appropriate safety measures for their jobs, unions have absolutely NOT outlived their usefulness.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

There are three problems here. First, federal and state labor law is tilted heavily toward unions. This is a relic of the 1930s Depression-era legislation, which was itself in part a reaction against goon tactics used by some management.

The second problem is the nature of the public sector vs. private. If the garment makers union (or the UAW) drives wages above the point where a company can be competitive in its market, the company goes out of business. Competition limits abuse.

In the public sector there is no competition. The enterprise does not survive as a result of customers voluntarily purchasing the goods or services it produces. By definition, there is very little "voluntary" in the transaction between government and citizens. In the final analysis the state can send men with guns to collect the wealth of the inhabitants. So the abuse-limiting mechanisms are much weaker compared to the private sector.

In his book Steve Malanga, who wrote the WSJ article I posted above, cites a third problem, which he claims is a clear and present danger to democracy. That is the fact that public employee unions now enjoy outsized political clout given their numbers and contributon to the commonweal. They contribute heavily to politicians, with both cash and political activism. It is the old problem of "disbursed costs paying for concentrated benefits," but "on steroids."

 

[Liar]

I hope they fire every one of them. A strike is one thing. An illegal straike another. But to do it on christmas so you can shaft the most people? Fire em all and start over agan at square one with non union labor in the transit sector.

I'm a little confused on the issue. Why is it illegal? Yes, I read about the Taylor Law in the original article, but I can't seem to Google up a decent explanation to why public employees should not have the right to strike.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I'm a little confused on the issue. Why is it illegal? Yes, I read about the Taylor Law in the original article, but I can't seem to Google up a decent explanation to why public employees should not have the right to strike.

Because they are considered "civil service" workers and are very hard if not impossible to fire as a result. "Civil service" was a progressive era reform intended to insulate government workers from political influence, as when the mayor would say, "So, Officer O'Bannion, do you like that nice secure police job? If you want to keep it you better work for my re-election campaign!"

Until recent decades states did not allow public employees to organize unions for this reason. It is pretty clear that having both civil service protection and union status is not sensible, and the result since this became the norm has been a disaster for taxpayers. The disaster will get worse when the absurdly generous retirement benefits that politicians have granted to purchase public employee union support come due.

 

[Liar]

Because they are considered "civil service" workers and are very hard if not impossible to fire as a result. "Civil service" was a progressive era reform intended to insulate government workers from political influence, as when the mayor would say, "So, Officer O'Bannion, do you like that nice secure police job? If you want to keep it you better work for my re-election campaign!"

Ok, but wouldn't that be extortion, corruption, whay-have-you anyway? Which is...you know... illegal?

Until recent decades states did not allow public employees to organize unions for this reason. It is pretty clear that having both civil service protection and union status is not sensible, and the result since this became the norm has been a disaster for taxpayers. The disaster will get worse when the absurdly generous retirement benefits that politicians have granted to purchase public employee union support come due.

No argument from me there. If they don't play by the same rules as private enterprise workers in the first place, you'll get an imbalance in the system if you have the same kind of organisation backing them up with the same means.