The Union Has Caved ...and the strike is over, though the trains still aren't running.

"We got nothing. Absolutely nothing," said George Perlstein, a member of the Transit Workers' Union executive board.

Which makes one wonder why exactly the union went out on strike in the first place...whether union head Roger Touissant overestimated the union's staying power or level of public support...and just how much longer Touissant will remain head of that union after the dust settles. No one's going to be very happy about a strike that devastated New York businesses for three days before Christmas...and that won the union "absolutely nothing."

And while Mayor Bloomberg made a big mistake describing union leaders as "thuggish," Touissant was equally offensive in comparing the transit strikers to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks was not breaking the law so that she would get to retire at age 50, rather than 55....  ¶ 3:31 PM