Strike!
As I write this and look out my window—multi-tasking!—cars on Broadway are stacked like shoes in Imelda Marcos' closet. People are getting frustrated; I've heard the distant sound of one screaming woman, and the bleating of horns drifts upward toward the sky.
Existential digression: Why do people in bumper-to-bumper traffic honk their horns?
All of this is because the Transit Workers Union has gone on strike, and buses and subways aren't running.
The primary issue is retirement benefits. At the moment, transit workers can retire at 55 and receive full pension benefits, which are substantial—half their annual pay, among other things. I'm not sure how many other Americans have that assurance after only 25 years on the job.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority wanted to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62 for new hires. That seems reasonable to me. But earlier this year, the union, which gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to New York's wildly corrupt state legislators, pushed a bill that would actually
lower the retirement age from 55 to 50. (It was actually passed; Governor George Pataki vetoed it.)
The MTA has dropped its demand for a higher retirement age for new workers and is instead asking that future employees contribute six percent of their wages toward pensions, up from two percent now. The union refuses to consider the idea.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I sympathize with the workers, who often have tough jobs. Would you want to drive a train underground for eight hours a day for 25 years? Or maneuver a bus through midtown Manhattan? That can't be good for the blood pressure.
Of course, there are some union workers who have pretty cushy jobs—subway attendants, for example, who do shockingly little work and frequently manifest a ton of attitude if you dare to interrupt them while they're reading a newspaper or chatting on their cell phones. Three-quarters of the time they're being paid to sit in a booth and drink coffee.
But going back to the workers' side, the MTA does seem to adjust its budget numbers arbitrarily—they have a deficit, they need to raise fares; they have a surplus, they want to build a new headquarters. I don't trust 'em.
On the other hand, New York's transit workers are pretty well paid, and they have great benefits. (They don't have to contribute a thing for health insurance, for example.) The average subway or bus driver is paid $63,000 a year, which is a living wage, though far from excessive in this area.
On balance, I think I'm supporting management on this one. The union wants its workers to be able to retire at age 50? Come on.
Two other points: As difficult as this strike is going to be, I think it would have been much worse if it had come when first expected, about four or five days ago. This city is already shutting down for Christmas; many people just won't come in to work. And the week between Christmas and New Year's is dead anyway. As is the week after New Year's, for that matter. So I think a mid-December strike would have been worse.
Second, it's days like this when I'm especially pleased that the office I commute to is about ten feet away from my bedroom....
