As you might imagine, the commie sleazbags at ANSWER are all upset about this. What a joke.
Posted on 12/20/2005 6:11:13 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
In its standoff with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Transport Workers Union has highlighted once again its ability to upset millions of the city's subway and bus riders. It is an enduring tradition of militancy that dates to the union's creation during the Great Depression. Indeed, in New York, a city that has weathered major strikes by sanitation workers, drawbridge operators, teachers and social workers, no union seems able to unsettle residents quite like the one that moves the subways and buses. Members of T.W.U. Local 100, which represents the 33,700 transit workers whose three-year contract expired on Friday, often invoke two mottoes: "We Move New York" and "United, Invincible."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Again - weeks is not months and a local, several-hours-long event is not the same as a citywide indefinite strike.
Let me explain it for you as simply as I can: a few hundred extra cops can volunteer for overtime on the single day of March 17, for example. The amount of extra tourism revenue most likely offsets the overtime cost and the city's safety is not compromised. When transit strikes require the presence of several thousand extra officers for weeks, we are not talking about a few hundred cops who did two shifts - we are talking about thousands of cops, a large percentage of the total force, working double shifts consistently, with a predictable toll on job performance. Add to this that the strike - unlike St. Patrick's Day or the marathon or the tree lighting - hurts city tourism and tax revenues while creating a financial burden many times the magnitude of special event OT.
Every government agency in the region had enough time to set up their own contingency plans.
Contingency plans can only last for so long before they begin taking a severe toll on effectiveness and become an enormous financial strain.
These scumbags are endangering public safety and your lame attempts to sugarcoat their criminality are embarrassing.
Public sector unions are indistinguishable from any other criminal conspiracy against the taxpayers.
"It shouldn't take more than a few days to start service on the major routes with new hires - there is no reason for this to take weeks."
You would know better than I. I though it would take a lot longer.
It would probably take weeks to get service going at every subway stop, absolutely and without question.
But the most traveled routes - like trains between downtown Brooklyn, downtown Manhattan, midtown Manhattan and 149th Street could be up and running in days, I would think.
I would guess than two lines and about five stations apiece on those two lines represent more than 50% of the commuters.
And NYC can't understand why many corporate HQs are moving out of the city.
New York City has long been a Marxist rat-hole for this very reason -- because its citizens have gone so far in compromising their freedom for the sake of monetary gain, comfort and convenience that it's not even recognizable as a free, American social order anymore.
Oh, please.
This is a particularly lame way to sidestep your earlier, inadequate arguments, but let's address it.
NYC depends on public transit and other nonessential services like water and power as well (I mean, you don't actually need electricity to live, and you can always buy water at the supermarket if you need it that badly).
The transit system allows for a very efficient use of limited space on a densely populated island.
Your suggestion that a city "should be closed down tomorrow" because it has engineered intelligent solutions that enable it to be one of the most prosperous municipalities on earth is laughable.
New York City has long been a Marxist rat-hole for this very reason
Compared to San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington DC and Chicago NYC is one of the least Marxist large cities in America and for that reason it is, far from being a hell-hole, a delightful place to live in. Perhaps that's why it, unlike the other cities I've mentioned, has a inflow of American citizens from other cities relocating to it every year instead of the outflow that the others are experiencing.
I hope you realize how silly it is for a union shill, defending the TWU of all unions, to cry about Marxism.
because its citizens have gone so far in compromising their freedom for the sake of monetary gain, comfort and convenience that it's not even recognizable as a free, American social order anymore
I see - it's a hellhole, but a comfortable, convenient hellhole.
While NYC has definite shortcomings - its antiquated gun laws, for example - New Yorkers have a free American social order par excellence.
Testimony to that is the enormous number of successful businesses started in NYC every year.
Your entire argument on this thread is schizophrenic: you decry Marxism while you make excuses for a Marxist union and while you decry New Yorkers for wanting to be prosperous and comfortable.
Get a grip.
The TWU is a criminal organization in dire need of a smackdown.
But mgmt can't fire them without cause. If the strike is illegal, then now mgmt has a cause to fire participants, hence the importance of the law. Of course one could argue that simply the act of striking, regardless of illegality, could be considered 'cause', but illegality makes that a lot easier.
You're actually making my point. If water and power are so essential to public health and safety in New York City (and I would make the case that they are far more important than public transit), then why aren't employees of these public utilities covered by the Taylor Law?
The transit system allows for a very efficient use of limited space on a densely populated island.
I agree. That doesn't mean it has to be a public utility.
Your suggestion that a city "should be closed down tomorrow" because it has engineered intelligent solutions that enable it to be one of the most prosperous municipalities on earth is laughable.
Perhaps that's why it, unlike the other cities I've mentioned, has a inflow of American citizens from other cities relocating to it every year instead of the outflow that the others are experiencing.
Keep that in mind as you walk home from work today.
I hope you realize how silly it is for a union shill, defending the TWU of all unions, to cry about Marxism.
I am not a "union shill" in any sense of the word. I simply recognize that even a major disruption in my own life doesn't qualify as a public health and safety concern. I lived through a transit strike in another city, and I learned some good lessons about dealing with a situation like this. Flexibility is more important than anything else (which is why I would never work in a location where I depended entirely on a single mode of transportation. And most important of all is this: if the government isn't willing to do what really needs to be done to address the situation, then it's wasting everyone's time and energy.
I'll think about that the next time I come across a U.S. soldier returning home from Iraq through Penn Station -- standing outside in the freezing cold on 33rd Street because he's not allowed to smoke a cigarette inside a freaking bar in this city.
Ah, but they are. There are some utilities in the state which are privatized and not subject to the Taylor law, but the private companies themselves are on the legal hook for uninterrupted service and they will be penalized if they do not comply.
Keep that in mind as you walk home from work today.
I'd rather walk four miles down Fifth Avenue on a few days while these idiots are dealt with than walk four miles around downtown Detroit, downtown Newark, downtown Baltimore or other municipalities with weaker or nonexistent Taylor laws.
And most important of all is this: if the government isn't willing to do what really needs to be done to address the situation, then it's wasting everyone's time and energy.
Absolutely. And what needs to be done is to fire all these jokers, arrest them all, fine them all, take all their pensions and ban them all from public jobs for life.
Then no one would try this malarkey ever again.
This reminds me of Thomas Sowell's question: Is there anything from the entire field of Sociology which has proven worthwhile or useful to mankind in the last 50 years?
My, what a poignant picture you paint.
My brother, a captain in the US Armored Cavalry and a native New Yorker, does what any normal soldier does when faced with smoking restrictions - whips out his chew and asks for an extra glass.
Thanks for pointing out that NYC is the only municipality in America with a smoking ban, the very first to enact one, and is thus uniquely Marxist in a way that no other American city is.
The private companies have the ability to fire their employees and replace them, if that's what they need to do to meet their legal obligations.
A number of officials in the city and/or state governments in New York exposed themselves as hypocrites in this regard a while back when there was some kind of job action threatened against a power company in the New York City area. The utility had previously been privatized as a means of saving money, but with the threatened strike or lockout there were calls from many public officials to re-write the Taylor Law to cover private companies in areas related to public health and safety as well as public employees.
I recognized that little stunt for exactly what it would have been -- a piece of legislative fraud that would have allowed these two-faced public officials to have it both ways . . . to reduce costs by privatizing a public utility, but then retroactively forcing the private operator to function in the same legal/labor environment as a public entity.
I'd rather walk four miles down Fifth Avenue on a few days while these idiots are dealt with than walk four miles around downtown Detroit, downtown Newark, downtown Baltimore or other municipalities with weaker or nonexistent Taylor laws.
Those places aren't sh!t-holes because they lack strong laws governning public employees. They're sh!t-holes because they don't function as police states with 40,000+ law enforcement officers at various levels of government.
About 1 cop for every 250 residents.
These guys are suposed to be serving the people, but government unions essentially turn the whole philosophy on its head; the people are now the ones serving the government.
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