I support TWU, and if I lived in New York I'd probably call in sick from work to go picket with them.

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Yay!!

I ♥ you

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all organizations are subject to corrupt and greed. unions aren't above such things, obviously, and I will be the first to admit that. But, it makes me sad that people feel that unions are no longer necessary. things like health care, paid vacations, 40 hour work weeks, overtime, sexual harrassment regulations...things that are essential to a person's survival in the workplace...these things were all fought for, if not thought of, won, and preserved by unions. anyone who thinks that, in a capitalist system, the working class will not get horrifically screwed little by little by the capitalist class without the unions to keep them in check is very deluded. we must keep the remnants of the last labor movement alive. if for no other reason, the Right will not allow another one to happen and we will aid them in their causes.

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I think most of us support the TWU... to an extent.

Personally, I'd be fine with the strike if they did it during the summer. It would still be a huge inconvenience, without being quite as dangerous and economically crippling to the city. (Why was the schedule shifted to December, anyway?)

But aside from that, I don't understand why the populace isn't pissed at Gov. Pataki. He's the guy who's been systematically taking funds away from the MTA and is now trying to stay out of the whole situation (aside from making public statements against the union).

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THE POINT is for it to be economically crippling. It's sure as hell not dangerous. If it weren't economically crippling, it wouldn't get solved.

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I appreciate unions, even if their strikes sometimes inconvenience me (like when the grocery store employees union went on strike and I had to find one chain not affected by the strike and not hiring scabs to shop at so as not to cross the picket line and show my support, but then I felt bad shopping at what I assume is a non-union grocery store). If it weren't for unions, I'd work 80 hours a week for $2 and I'd be docked pay everytime I go to the bathroom. Seriously, I respect that union members have faced a lot, including physical threats, in the past to get us the few valuable rights workers have today (and are losing).

I'm sorry for all the people who can't get to work or anywhere else they need to go, though. But workers are getting so screwed these days, I applaud any group who objects to placing a low cap on pay raises (so that someone who devotes fifteen years to the company makes no more than someone who's only been around three years), cutting costs by replacing at-par health insurance with subpar health insurance that barely justifies the increased deductibles and copays (while at the same time, the top execs brag in the business section about the big, fat bonuses they get), being forced to work mandatory overtime for no pay, or any of the other turds being tossed at workers by management.

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Oh DailyKos has always made me smash my head into my monitor. I've had to replace hundreds of monitors because I didn't check the status bar before clicking a link!

phew!

I almost called CSPAN this morning (before I passed out) and called for a nation wide strike in solidarity (but I passed out).

But you probably weren't talking about me...

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Not you. :)

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I'm solidly behind TWU. People's complaints about unions are identical to their complaints about corporate power. Fix corporate power, and unions won't corrupt because it won't be necessary for them to.

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Yup. Corporations are several orders of magnitude more corrupt than unions.

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I'm a big fan of unions. No complaints here. Well, one. I do think it's a damn shame that the people most affected by a transit strike tend to be the ones who can least afford other alternatives.

It's sort of like how I feel about teachers' strikes. Do I believe that teachers have reason and justification to strike? YES YES YES. I'm behind them 100%. But I'm very sad that the people who ultimately are harmed by the teachers' absence are, well...the kids.

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And that's where the public gets involved. If you make sure the teachers never have to strike, you never hurt the kids.

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I do think it's a damn shame that the people most affected by a transit strike tend to be the ones who can least afford other alternatives.
Thanks for pointing that out.

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In New York, doesn't the strike pretty much affect everyone?

Given what I know about NYC transportation, it seems to me that this is probably one of the most egalitarian transit strikes possible. If it happened in Los Angeles, for example, it would have a hugely disproportionate effect on the poor -- not so much in New York.

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Unions aren't perfect but they're better than not having unions.

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Yup. And what people don't realize is that the goal of the corporations/moneyed elites is exactly that: not having unions.

This country would be shit if we didn't have unions. And that's the Republican game plan.

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Well, Kos is a free thinker, and in no way a bourgeois cement-head secure in his own privilege and smugness.

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Kos isn't the site as a whole, and hasn't been for years.

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A friend of mine is attending Hofstra on Long Island and has to use the MTA as part of her trip home to New Hampshire; due to the strike, it sounds like she could wind up stranded for the holidays. This upsets her greatly and I feel very bad for her.

I'm not anti-union— rather, I'm pro-union enough that I get really bothered by how little some people seem to care about workers' rights, to the extent where they see not only the exploited workers but also all the poor individuals inconvenienced by the workers' striking and just shrug their shoulders like it shouldn't be such a big deal. And I'm bothered by the people who get inconvenienced and blame the workers completely. And I wish that striking didn't cause as much collateral damage to begin with.

It's all a horribly messy situation, in my opinion.

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And I wish that striking didn't cause as much collateral damage to begin with.

But, um, that's the point of striking, you know.

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i don't think knee-jerk support of a union, or of any cause or organization is particularly liberal; however, the TWU has been treated badly by the MTA for years now; the MTA squanders its surplus on things like Holiday discounts for riders who aren't complaining about the regular fares. the MTA pretended to have a deficit a few years ago when they really had a surplus. the head of the MTA didn't show up to the negotiating table until well AFTER the first deadline, the TWU has been working with an "agreement" rather than a contract for far too long, and while the 8% a year obviously isn't going to happen, they deserve a solid contract with guaranteed benefits and security of a kind they don't have. some people complain that the workers make "too much" as it is, but they need to remember that the transit workers have vital, often dangerous, sometimes unsanitary jobs and that the only reason they are paid almost enough to live in New York is that their union hasn't failed them quite as badly as those of so many other industries.

etc.

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My knee routinely jerks in favor of unions, and I consider an impulsive predisposition to support unions to be very liberal.

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I love unions, and I do think they should be demanding better conditions for themselves. I just think they went a little too far with SOME of it. Just because I support unions doesn't mean I'm going to support their causes unconditionally without any critical thinking about the demands they're making.

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Nah, I'm all for it. I think this was absolutely brilliant timing on the union's part and I hope the judge laughs Bloomers out of the courtroom for trying to make the Union break the strike.

Of course, I'd have a heart attack if it happened in Chicago, but I don't have to walk too far to get to where I need to go there either.

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Power to the People! Workers Unite! I'm with you on that, brother.

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Now's the time when I get to watch my normally liberal, feminist, quasi-socialist, multicultural, queer-positive, social justice folks on my friends list degenerate into a bunch of union-haters.
You have made my day!

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Yer welcome!

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So glad to see it wasn't just me who was so infuriated by all that.

What really got me was the people griping about how the MTA folks shouldn't strike because they get better wages and benefits than some other workers! Apparently, if you're better off than anybody, you have no right to earn more!

I commented, "So? The other workers should go on strike, too." And someone told me I was talking like a Republican.

Sometimes you just have to laugh I guess.

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Talking. Like. A. Republican.

*rolls eyes!*

Yeah, that was a common response to the grocery store strike in California a while ago. "They have better benefits and wages than me!"

Me: "So don't YOU wish that YOU had a union, too?"

Them: "...umh ah it's just not fair!"

Me: "So why aren't you taking a job as a grocery worker?"

Them: "You kidding? You couldn't pay me enough to do that job!"

Me: "Uh huh. Thanks for proving why the union's demands are reasonable."

Them: "They're not reasonable! They're totally unskilled, anyone could do it, and they make more than meeeee!!!"

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