IT'S ON- TWU STRIKES!!!!

some info about MTA chair peter kalikow

inherited fortune from his real estate developer father in 1982.

spent decades building high-rise towers in NYC.

was the financial architect of Alfonse D’Amato’s Senate career
(D'Amato was in turn the man who helped guide Geo Pataki to governor's office)

publisher of The New York Post (1988-1993) where he left behind a debt of $4.5 million to the government in unpaid withholding taxes and a declaration of bankruptcy. That bankruptcy ultimately enabled owner Rupert Murdoch to wipe out the paper’s contract with the New York Newspaper Guild, force the Post unit into a strike, break the unit, and fire all Guild members

Kalikow had declared personal bankruptcy two years earlier.

In July 1994, Gov. George Pataki (to whose election campaign Kalikow and members of Kalikow’s family had made substantial contributions), appointed him a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
On March 13, 2001, Kalikow advanced to the position of chairperson of the authority.

Captain M wrote: Thats racist horseshit, I know plenty of white middle class people that will have to work till 65, have no pension, and put in more than 25 years at their jobs, and dont look forward to free drugs.

I just found out that on top of pension TWU Worker ALSO have a 401K!

Does anyone think they might all get canned like when reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Their contracts are gold by comparison to what many people make.

Slow down and reread. The question was whether union workers might view the negotiations through a racial lens, as a result of the composition of MTA management compared to the composition of the union. When someone isn't giving you what you want, you question all the reasons why.

Let's establish something else. Government-related jobs (and this is a quasi-government position) traditionally have had outstanding benefits as compensation for dealing with soulless positions with shit management that frequently changes as a result of elections. Further, I don't begrudge such benefits, but (market forces aside), think everyone should have them--especially when it comes to prescription drugs and other healthcare. I happen to side with the MTA in this particular fight, but I think calling race as a factor in negotiations into question on this is valid, if only to try to figure out what's going on in everyone's heads.

JamesOnDean wrote: [quote=Captain M]Thats racist horseshit, I know plenty of white middle class people that will have to work till 65, have no pension, and put in more than 25 years at their jobs, and dont look forward to free drugs.

I just found out that on top of pension TWU Worker ALSO have a 401K!

Does anyone think they might all get canned like when reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Their contracts are gold by comparison to what many people make.

Slow down and reread. The question was whether union workers might view the negotiations through a racial lens, as a result of the composition of MTA management compared to the composition of the union. When someone isn't giving you what you want, you question all the reasons why.

Let's establish something else. Government-related jobs (and this is a quasi-government position) traditionally have had outstanding benefits as compensation for dealing with soulless positions with shit management that frequently changes as a result of elections. Further, I don't begrudge such benefits, but (market forces aside), think everyone should have them--especially when it comes to prescription drugs and other healthcare. I happen to side with the MTA in this particular fight, but I think calling race as a factor in negotiations into question on this is valid, if only to try to figure out what's going on in everyone's heads.

Thanks, that was my point. I don't even know what that other guy was saying. Oh, and by the way, the TWU was incredulous that the final offer on Friday didn't include a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday--like every other agency gets.

horseycraze:

You're way, way off on your facts dude. "Doing the job nobody else wants to?" As a matter of fact, there are 30 applicants for every job in the MTA. And that ties to your other egregious misstatement--that you get paid what you're worth even if you work in a union. By definition, a monopoly like a union distorts the market and therefore true value. "Worth" is entirely subjective, and is fairly decided by supply and demand. That is, unless you monopolize one side of that equation, threaten and coerce everyone to stay in line, and prevent anyone else from working even if they're perfectly happy with the wages.

And the race card is really weak. The judge that has sided with the city at every turn is black, and Toussaint aside, unions are heavily dominated by whites. Rich whites are going to ride this strike out without blinking an eye, while poor minorities are going to get hurt the worst.

horseycraze wrote: [quote=J0518]also, you bet your ass that my 30K-in-student-loan-owing Masters-degree holding self should be making more than someone with a high school diploma. i am no mood for intellectualizing that point any further than this, which does not bode well for the guest i'm at war with on the PS board in a few minutes...

I guess you're not going to respond to this, but the value of your education only matters to you. If you could make $20k more per year than you do now, but it meant working in a rat-infested subway tunnel for 8 hours day would you do it? I'm heavily saddled with student debt, because I'm putting my self through law school. But that doesn't mean I'm elitist enough to think I deserve to make more money than anyone else. You get paid what you're worth--if anyone here wants to work in the subway because the pay is so fucking great, I suggest they go and do it.

Anyway, if a transit strike is so costly to the city, doesn't that demostrate the value of the people who do the job that no one else wants to do?

I agree with you, except I come to a different conclusion. What this points to, I think, is everyone's assumption that crappy work (ie. working long hours in shitty and dangerous conditions) merits LESS compensation, not MORE. This would explain the constant belly-aching: "they make HOW much? but me, with my multiple degrees from influential and respected academic institutions, working at a high-flying publishing job, I only make .... that is so AWFUL of them not to be GRATEFUL for what they have!" There's also the question of why people are always harping on how awful a job MTA workers are doing--how stations and trains are not clean, the booth workers are unhelpful, and so on--as if to say, even more, that they don't deserve a dime.

It is legitimate to point out that:

a) The highly educated don't want to do scut work, no matter how much it pays. They believe that these jobs would be done largely for free by recent immigrants (true) and discount the skill and responsibility required (unreal).

b) None of them would ever consider trying to get a job at the MTA, because it's "below them."

c) That being said, if the MTA fired all union workers, hired all poor people who would take next-to-nothing, and there were a train crash because one of the drivers has three jobs to support his family and sleeps two hours a night, they would be the ones crying foul and claiming that this was evidence of laziness or incompetence.

and d) These very people often also treat people "inferior" to them (in education, mind you, surely not in race or gender) like shit (look at how people treat retail workers!).

Unions are clearly not ideal, but lots of so-called leftists betray a shocking amount of prejudice and intolerance. Who's to say that driving a train 8 hours a day is more or less important than a stupid ad agency job? Who says it requires more training? It is ludicrous to imagine that investment bankers (who admit they could do their job with a high school diploma and six month's training) are "worth" $50,000 more per year than subway drivers are. If we're measuring importance, after all, let's look at policemen and teachers. We're not. We are measuring to what extent the job is ATTRACTIVE and what it REQUIRES.

Usually, people assume these are correlated. A nice job, a respectable job, requires high levels of education and pays out a good salary. It is both attracitve and high in requirements. Teaching, however, is high in requirements and low in attractiveness. It doesn't pay. If teachers went on strike, we'd hear a lot of the same growling: but they are holding the city for ransom! They're not doing their JOB. Driving a subway is highly attractive--in wages--but does not have high requirements. They "shouldn't be making as much" and are also "holding the city for ransom."

But this doesn't seem to add up. What can we conclude? Its about prestige. The more prestigious a job is, the more it pays, the more it requires (rightly or not) and the more its considered to be "just." When the job isn't all that prestigious, it doesn't pay as much, even if it may have the same requirements as elsewhere (take teaching or architecture), and its practitioners tend to be devalued. ("Teachers make little because they couldn't do anything else;" "architects could be wealthy but are poor because they don't design nice buildings;" etc.) And jobs that are not prestigious at all and don't require anything are supposed to be low-paying, even if they are necessary (what would happen if the janitors didn't take out the trash or clean?).

When these last workers go on strike, demanding a good deal, they piss even "liberals" off. True leftists would acknowledge that:

a) Everyone should be entitled to a certain standard of living.

b) That should not be based on level of achievement, but rather on working hard and doing your job well.

c) And it should apply to housing (including commuting); salary; health; retirement; and kid's education.

d) Everyone should be entitled to these things, yet few want the state to provide or require them. The union, therefore, is the last chance for achieving a good standard of living for the workers.

e) Since, in c and d, housing, health, retirement, and education are not subsidized by the city (and, as such, poor people live far from the city and their jobs, in bad housing with bad schools and have no retirement to speak of and little or poor health care), it should be legitimate for workers to get more salary or better benefits to try to improve their condition to something livable. And that they should use their unions and their power to achieve them.

Now, many of you are not saying these things, others of you are kind of saying some of them, and very few are actually going down the line and being as awful as I am arguing against here. And few of you, I imagine, would identify with the term, "leftist."

But I still felt as if it were worth pointing out that in this "meritocracy," it seems that the people who perceive themselves to be "on top" (in education and in prestige, whether remunerated "adequately" or not) feel as if it is legitimate to belittle those at "the bottom" as failures, fuck-ups, assholes, and so on for trying to improve their lot "against market forces."

You sound like trickle-down Reaganites, people. You may not be socialists, but I exhort you to take a close look at what your assumptions are and ask yourself whether we want to live in a society where the only people who can retire comfortably are the uber-wealthy and where all the people "below" work for almost nothing and scrape by in dangerous ghettos with terrible schools and no future. That may not mean that you support this union, it may not mean that you think unions are the solution, but it certainly does mean that you treat those who work hard to get you to your "prestigious" job (which, it seems, often doesn't pay you as much as you think you're worth) like shit.

Rant over. God, when am I going to write this paper?

BrooklynSwordStyle wrote: I gotta say I don't believe that argument muteflute. Though it is very well argued.

I-bankers get paid more because they bring in more. A bank knows that for each banker they have they make x dollars, therefore they are willing to pay out y dollars for each banker.

It's not that crappy work merits less compensation, it's that those qualified to do crappy work (which is most of us) instinctively seek out less crappy work, thereby leaving those just qualified enough to do it doing it. Everyone rises to the level of their own incompetence!

The reason I wouldn't want to do scut work is not an "it's beneath me" reason, it's that I would find it intilectually boring. That's not because I'm some sort of Dr. Hawking. I would just find it boring and you'd have to pay me a fuckload to put up with the boredom. Hell, my current non-scut work job is boring and I'm thinking of leaving soon.

These are all good points. I would add, though, that the 30,000 subway workers are fueling NYC's economy; if they bring in x, (which is millions) they should receive y (which is also millions). It's difficult to ask what it means, in the end, what one deserves compared to the revenue they bring in. Does a subway driver's salary derive from the total cost of commuting sans subway for everyone they drive around during their 8 hours? Or is it just, well, scut pay for a scut job? These are questions I don't know the answers to, but I do know that some people (not you!) don't seem to show them any respect whatsoever.

I personally would say that we should eliminate, to a great extent, the idea of compensation-for-merit, in the sense that an educated person working a high-prestige job shouldn't make that much more than an uneducated person working in the subway. Maybe that's communist (could very well be), but I would say that it's hard to argue that the US is moving in the opposite direction, especially as Ibankers are given their Christmas bonuses and Walmart, NYU, the MTA, and, well, everywhere, are still union-busting.

That all aside, one of my fears in writing before was that it sounded an awful lot like I am arguing that all educated and ambitious people are douchebags. Which is not what I am saying, because I am educated and ambitious and, I hope, not a douchebag. And that's why I appreciate:

BrooklynSwordStyle wrote: Just because someone is educated doesn't mean they treat other people like shit who are not as educated. Douchebags, however, are always douchebags no matter how much or how little money or education they have.

Couldn't have said it better.

Well said escap.

The big problem is that it is very easy to quanitfy how much an I-banker is worth to the I-bank, while it is very difficult to figure out how much a subway conductor is worth. The conductor is not worth all that much to the MTA, because a conductor does not actually bring in revenue directly. A since the MTA is a public organization, it become murkier. A train conductor may be worth more to the city than they are to the MTA, since public transit fuels city economics perhaps more than the MTA bottom line.

It's far easier to say "Joe brought in 300K worth of business this year, let's pay him a total of 200K in salary and benefits" than it is to say "Bob did really well running that train, which probably allowed three Joes to get to work on time, which resulted in the city recovering x% more tax than if Joe had to buy a different apartment and live closer, so let's pay Bob $50K but also agree to pay him $25K a year for life after he's worked 20 years. How long do you think Bob will live anyways?"

BrooklynSwordStyle wrote: The big problem is that it is very easy to quanitfy how much an I-banker is worth to the I-bank, while it is very difficult to figure out how much a subway conductor is worth. The conductor is not worth all that much to the MTA, because a conductor does not actually bring in revenue directly. A since the MTA is a public organization, it become murkier. A train conductor may be worth more to the city than they are to the MTA, since public transit fuels city economics perhaps more than the MTA bottom line.

It's far easier to say "Joe brought in 300K worth of business this year, let's pay him a total of 200K in salary and benefits" than it is to say "Bob did really well running that train, which probably allowed three Joes to get to work on time, which resulted in the city recovering x% more tax than if Joe had to buy a different apartment and live closer, so let's pay Bob $50K but also agree to pay him $25K a year for life after he's worked 20 years. How long do you think Bob will live anyways?"

This is a weak example, do you really think anyone can be an I-banker, Trading Places was a movie not a documentary.

Certainly not anyone can drive a subway, but it's my estimation is that anyone that can drive a tractor trailer could drive a train.

Why should it be so different with public employees?

They are part of an operation that is providing a service, how is that any different McDonalds?

I'm not sure I believe your pals, have any of them done the $1 dollar bet thing with a dude off the street?

I want college credit for having read this thread.

If the city had manpower to spare, it could raise as much money as needed by ticketing car horn honkers during this strike.

Thought you all might find this interesting (if not worthy of further debate)

Illegal But Not Immoral
By Judith Mahoney Pasternak, AlterNet
Posted on December 22, 2005, Printed on December 22, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/29963/

Many of the New York City buses that aren't running now have a famous, half-century-old photograph posted prominently in one of the ad spaces. It shows a woman looking wearily out of a bus window.

The woman, of course, is the late Rosa Parks, and the photograph celebrates her historic refusal to give up her seat, a refusal that set in motion events that changed the face of our nation. Today we call Rosa Parks an American hero. In 1955, her action was illegal. Indeed, it was its illegality -- and the risk she took to commit it -- that made it heroic.

But it was not unique. There were many other actions that were illegal when they were committed, actions we now recognize as at least the exercise of a universal right, and in many cases beneficial to people everywhere. India might not be free today if Mohandas Gandhi had not led tens of thousands to the sea to gather illegal salt in 1930. There are Jews in this country and around the world who would never have been born had not brave Danes, Netherlanders and even Germans hidden them from the SS in the 1930s and '40s. The refusal to carry passes in South Africa in the 1960s was only one of many nonviolent but illegal campaigns that ultimately toppled apartheid. In our own country, it was illegal to shelter a runaway slave in the 1850s and '60s, to marry someone of another race (until 1967!); and, for much of the 19th century, to organize a union.

These actions are worth mentioning now because so much of the commentary on the transit workers' strike has centered on the fact that under New York State's 1967 Taylor Law, the strike is illegal, as are all strikes by public employees. Both New York State Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have in fact used the word "illegal" in every single comment they have made to the media about the strike. Mayor Bloomberg, indeed, has used the strike's illegal nature to justify describing it as "shameful" and "thuggish."

But the most cursory look back at history will show us that the mere fact that an action has been outlawed has not always meant that it was wrong. Some 30,000-plus New Yorkers are today picketing in the bitter cold, risking substantial financial and other penalties, to defend not only their own future as workers, but the future of transit workers not yet hired. The Metropolitan Transit Authority is demanding what amounts to a six percent pay cut for future transit employees, in the form of an unprecedented contribution to their own pensions.

Ever since the Transport Workers Union won pensions for transit workers, the pensions have been a substantial part of what makes it worthwhile to "move New York" by doing, among other arduous and sometimes risky jobs, the hard work involved in keeping the world's only 24/7 subway system running. The union's strike for its future members might well be seen as valiant at another moment in time.

It's perfectly clear why Governor Pataki and the officials of the Metropolitan Transit Authority would harp on the illegality of the strike. But those of us who care about workers' rights -- and Mayor Bloomberg, who was elected with the support of several municipal unions -- should be pointing out that workers have a right to stop working when their employers don't offer them what they consider a fair deal -- and should be able to do it legally.


© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/29963/

The point above about it being difficult to quantity added value in the case of subsidized public employees is right on the money. You can estimate, but you have to take into account the value added to the city as a whole by each transit worker in making the calculation, and obviously that's extremely complicated. But that just gives you a ceiling. The idea that you should still hire someone who's equally qualified but willing to work for less still holds true, but is impossible to implement with a union in place. Unions are therefore great for their own members but horrible for other poor people who want those jobs and are willing to do it for less.

Also, I have to admit I'm very cynical towards the TWU, but my sense is that they're not striking because they feel aggrieved. Everyone in the world feels aggrieved. The TWU is striking because it thinks it has leverage, because it thinks it can benefit from the strike. Everyone wants more $ and benefits, but we don't strike because we think it will hurt us. If we want to avoid future strikes, we should make sure the lesson the TWU learns this time around is that its interests are better served by not striking. If they gain benefits from this strike, on the other hand, we can pretty much bet on there being another strike the next time around, and the next, and the next.

Captain M, I'm confident that it is much harder to evaluate a city service employee than it is to evaluate an employee of a business. It's simply because a city is not a business. City's have huge loss centers and relatively few profit centers.

How much is a garbage man worth? The only money he brings in would be a function of any resale of recycleables. Instead of providing a revenue stream he provides an increase in health and life quality, making a city more attractive and therefore more competitive in terms of attracting citizens who then bolster the tax base. I would argue that it is VERY difficult to figure out even an approximation of the valueation of a garbage man. A garbage man's monetary value to a city is a function of the tax base he serves, with the garbage man himself operating as a constant an equation that describes an increase in neighborhood attractiveness expressed as a tax base gain.

Therefore, garbage men are worth more when they serve transition neighborhoods that are on an upswing in terms of property values and earning demographics. Thus, as a complementary equation a garbage man is actually a negative revenue impact to the city when he serves a neighborhood that extracts money from the tax base (let's say a neighborhood that is very dependant upon city programs and services).

So from a high level economic view the city should put lots of garbage men in gentrifying neighborhoods and pull them from poor ones. But that would be a poor moral choice.

So in real life it becomes very difficult to express the value (and thus renumeration) of a garbage man. It's very simple to calculate the value of a McDonald's employee flipping burgers:

(net revenue per burger x burgers flipped per hour) - ((hourly employee salary) + (daily cost of employee benefits/shift hours))