Transit strike

boygabriel

Who's side are you on?
How did it affect you?


my answers:

I don't have enough info to make a call. The MTA says it can't afford pensions for 55+ year olds (want to raise retirement age to 62). Currently the big auto makers are defaulting on their pension plans, is the MTA merely being realistic before disaster strikes down the road like it is in the midwest right now? Or, is the Union right? Is it unfair to future generations to raise the retirement age?

How did it affect me? I didn't go to work today! And I probably won't go to work tomorrow! Woohoo! Though my girlfriend's law exams are getting pushed back every day of the strike. That sucks. Her vacation will slowly get pushed into oblivion.

What say you?

escap

Hmmmm, tough call here. Kind of like wondering if I'm on the side of the rapist or the rapee? On the one hand, being raped is a horrible violation and a traumatizing crime. On the other hand, the rapist might have been horny. Tough call.

I guess I'll have to go with the rapee, since rape is illegal, and hurts people. Yeah, breaking the law and hurting people somehow seems wrong to me--call me crazy.

Oh, I think it's an added bonus that the people who really get f'd over are mostly the poor and downtrodden in the first places such as small business owners, and including the transit workers themselves. I bet that most of them would rather not strike, but they've got no choice. They're victims of this union as much as anybody. I know--my wife is in the Teacher's Union and when the strike was being debated she was threatened and intimidated by the union and told in no uncertain terms that if she breathed a word of dissent she'd be ostracized and that the union would make her life miserable at every turn. What a bunch of cowardly assholes. The only people who deserve hell more than them are the politicians who have for all these years strengthened their hand and emboldened them.

alafairnadia

escap wrote: I guess I'll have to go with the rapee, since rape is illegal, and hurts people. Yeah, breaking the law and hurting people somehow seems wrong to me--call me crazy.

while I agree with you in that I am upset about the strike, I just want to point out that there is a significant difference between illegal criminal acts and civil acts that result in liability, including fines. you can make a vague analogy if the workers on strike are found in contempt, and then it depends on the quasi-criminality of that contempt - is it purely a civil fine, or could the person(s) be jailed for their continued violation? further, I sincerely doubt any court is going to find 30,000 people in contempt and throw them in jail. so the criminal argument is out the window. and the analogy to rape is out the window. (sorry for the xpost)

escap

Yeah, of course you're right about that--that was the walk from the upper west side talking.

Also, I don't think the individual workers should be held in contempt or even fined. It's not their fault, and in fact I believe that they are victims of the union as much as anyone. The union leaders, however, should be individually fined, thrown in jail for contempt, and they should absolutely be fired. How do you break the law and keep your job? I don't get that one.

boygabriel

whoa peeps. this turned very political. which is cool.

alafairnadia

escap wrote: Yeah, of course you're right about that--that was the walk from the upper west side talking.

Also, I don't think the individual workers should be held in contempt or even fined. It's not their fault, and in fact I believe that they are victims of the union as much as anyone. The union leaders, however, should be individually fined, thrown in jail for contempt, and they should absolutely be fired. How do you break the law and keep your job? I don't get that one.

honestly, on both sides of the table the leaders are such corrupt motherfuckers I want them all to lose their jobs. time to clean house.

escap

From all I've heard and read you're apparently right on that.

Do you think the MTA could/should be broken up? Do you think the city would do a better job or should the bus lines be sold to private cos? It seems clear that this MTA is completely inept.

boygabriel

Sadly I must go in to work in the Financial District on Thursday. I'm hoping to get a ride to the Brooklyn Bridge and then just walk across.

My girlfriend has to get to midtown around noon, I figured she should take a cab a little after 11 and go over the Williamsburg Bridge. Hopefully traffic in Manhattan isn't totally stopped.

carnivore

escap wrote: Do you think the MTA could/should be broken up? Do you think the city would do a better job or should the bus lines be sold to private cos? It seems clear that this MTA is completely inept.

I don't think the MTA is inherently inept. The problem is that for years now, the Republican administration has treated this critically important agency as a pool of political patronage positions. Just as Bush has done at the Federal level, Pataki has taken jobs that are supposed to go to competent bureaucrats and used them as payoffs for political support. Privatization of our transportation resources is not the answer, and is a bad idea because it presupposes that these agencies should be profitable. Service would be stripped back on all but the most profitable routes. Public transportation should be subsidized as necessary because the greater good requires that alternatives to cars exist. The density of our city would become intolerable if everyone relied on personal automobiles for their transportation (even if everyone could afford them). Of course, the ecological argument for mass transit is so obvious, I won't even belabor that.
I recognise that no one here is arguing that mass transit is "bad", or should be eliminated, but it often seems like privatization is a prelude to evisceration, especially when applied to services so essential that they should run at an overall loss if necessary. And the strongest advocates of privatization of goverment services always install the most corrupt and inept people into the public positions that they view with such disdain. They then cynically use the corruption and ineptitude as justification for their subsequent actions. Like the Bush administration, they create the conditions that justify a pre-existing agenda.

escap

All good points, but I used to live in Tokyo, where the trains were privatized about 10 years ago, and I can tell you that none of the problems you warned of exist there. Their trains are clean, safe, fast, and never, ever, ever late. And they are all for profit companies.

rah

escap wrote: All good points, but I used to live in Tokyo, where the trains were privatized about 10 years ago, and I can tell you that none of the problems you warned of exist there. Their trains are clean, safe, fast, and never, ever, ever late. And they are all for profit companies.

the same is not true of trains in the UK which were also privatized.

escap

I haven't been to London since I was a kid, but Wikipedia describes the current system as a private-public partnership whereby private companies maintain the infrastructure but the state runs the trains. Anyway, I don't really see any advantage to privatizing the subway since you'd still have a monopoly which is just as bad.

But I'd like to see some changes. Our subway system is not as modern as it should be. I came back from Shanghai last year astounded that a developing country's trains could embarrass ours so badly. I know they benefit from being new, etc., but still. From a pure standpoint of strike prevention it seems wise to separate the agencies that run the buses and trains, since the Taylor Law is apparently ineffectual. As far as modernizing the system, I guess since every last dollar over the next 50 years will go towards pension payments, we're out of luck.

I know! Let's tax rich people. It'll never occur to them to move out of the city and leave us without a tax base. Suckers.

boygabriel

lol @ your tax plan!!

Yeah, you could say our subway system isn't modern. According to the NY Times its the only major subway system in the world that isn't computerized/modernized. Our subway is using virtually the same technology as when it was started in 1902 (or whenever). On the one hand, that's impressive that the technology still works. on the other hand, MODERNIZE THE DAMN SUBWAY.

All the L-train construction is a test system for MTA "modernization", and that project has only taken 10 years!

escap wrote: I haven't been to London since I was a kid, but Wikipedia describes the current system as a private-public partnership whereby private companies maintain the infrastructure but the state runs the trains. Anyway, I don't really see any advantage to privatizing the subway since you'd still have a monopoly which is just as bad.

But I'd like to see some changes. Our subway system is not as modern as it should be. I came back from Shanghai last year astounded that a developing country's trains could embarrass ours so badly. I know they benefit from being new, etc., but still. From a pure standpoint of strike prevention it seems wise to separate the agencies that run the buses and trains, since the Taylor Law is apparently ineffectual. As far as modernizing the system, I guess since every last dollar over the next 50 years will go towards pension payments, we're out of luck.

I know! Let's tax rich people. It'll never occur to them to move out of the city and leave us without a tax base. Suckers.