Here's a little more detailed explanation of their demands. Not mentioned below is that the MTA has a $1 billion surplus, which is what the TWU wants a part of. The TWU demands all employees receive an 8% salary increase per year for each of the 3 years of the contract, plus improved benefits for maternity leave, and better funding for station maintenance. The MTA has offered a 3% raise the first year, a 4% raise the second year, and a 3.5% raise the third year. The striking workers reportedly earn an average of about 48,000 USD annually. The TWU also wants to lower the age of retirement (at which point the employee is eligible for a full pension) from 55 to 50. The MTA had wanted to raise the retirement age for newer workers from 55 to 62, but dropped this demand in exchange for pension contributions from new workers of 6% of gross salary per year for the first 10 years of employment. Under the previous contract, workers contribute 2% to their pension plan. [2] Citing the rising cost of health care, the MTA wants new employees to contribute 1% of their salary to pay for health insurance. Transit workers currently pay nothing for health insurance. At the last minute, the MTA offered a 3.5% per year raise and no change in the retirement age, with the caveat that new transit workers pay 6% of their wages into the pension fund, up from the 2% that current workers pay. The offer was rejected, and a strike declared. Combined, the pension and healthcare reforms the MTA seeks would cost about 30 million USD over the span of the three-year contract. Critics have lambasted both the MTA and TWU for allowing a strike to occur over such a relatively small sum. However, the pension costs would balloon to 160 million USD in the first 10 years, and 80 million USD per year after 20 years. The MTA claims that its reluctance to give in to the TWU on this point stems from fear of future deficits (projected to be 1 billion USD by 2009). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_York_City_transit_strike
Problem is not too many scabs know how to drive a subway train. Well it's almost 4. Time to start the trek home. See you cats back on the board in about 3 hours.
I gotta say I am really glad I am on vacation and out of NYC this week. I hope the strike is over by the 27th when I get back to the City.
NY Transit should learn from the Northwest Airlines mechanics strike. The mechanics struck back in August, and Northwest promptly had a replacement crew ready to take their place. Now, 4 months later, all the jobs have been permanently filled and the union strikers are left out in the cold, only hoping to be able to collect unemployment insurance and join the waiting list for future jobs. The union got PWNT, as they should have been. NY needs to get the replacement folks in their immediately.
That's what I'm saying...they should have had a replacement plan ready in advance, like NW Airlines did. Transit workers are easier to replace than airline mechanics...or at least they have less skills.
I was in a union one time...sacking groceries at Kroger, believe it or not... What can I say, It was my first job, and I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I can only imagine what I could have done with that 5 bucks/month in union dues I was paying...
In general, I support unions, but this is outrageous. The offer sounds fair, and what is truly awful is to subject the residents and merchants to this during the holiday season. Retailers have to be getting ruined. Hotels have to be getting creamed, with scads of cancellations and holiday vacations ruined for people around the country, and around the world. Just totally, incredibly stupid.
I want to say just one word to you. Are you listening? Robots. But before transit workers get too arrogant even as they look at their next prospective strike three years down the line, they should realize that technology already exists that would make them irrelevant. Already, trains in Paris, Cairo, and Calcutta operate with computerized or automated systems. In Paris, the Meteor Project was launched in 1998, with an automatic piloting system that controls the train line’s traffic, regulates speed, manages alarm devices, and allows for traffic of automatic and traditional conductor trains on the same line.There have been no serious accidents reported since this system deployed in the late 1990s, and more than a billion people have been transported. Computers make the trains run on time and they don’t threaten to walk off the job. All of us are replaceable, but some are more quickly replaceable than others. Already,the MTA spends 80% of its operating budget on personnel expenses. http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/g...html&Path=NYS/2005/12/16&ID=Ar01103&Mode=HTML
Actually, I read one story that said hotels were doing really well because some people are actually staying at hotels instead of travelling back home each night...
Maybe the subway drivers are hard to replace. I bet the bus drivers and conductors are easily replaced, just imagine the people who would like to fill those positions in the New York area that are willing to work for that type of wage!
Yup, many companies rented room for key personels so the company can keep operating, the cost to the city is about $ one billion per week.
Call me crazy, but I think this could be considered as an act of economic terrorism on the part of the union and the workers.
oh I see what you mean. forget about it. The MTA (management) makes Mike Brown look like a genius. They are the worst run agency in America. The only reason why the TWU can do what they are doing (holding the city hostage every few years) is because of the incredible incompetence of the MTA. This agency every year raises our fares by crying proverty, then suddenly after the raise, they magically find a $1 billion surplus. Do you know what they do with that money? no they dont reduce our fares, they decide to go and build a brand spanking new building for themsleves. If they weren't such a corrupt and umbling agency, the TWU would never stand a chance.
I always wanted to live in NY, maybe I'll become a subway train operator. these demands are ridiculous. do their leaders watch the news. pension plans? those things still exist? retirement age 50? com'on, now you're just being silly. why doesn't everyone go to the 401K
Yup. The businessman in me would start firing 1000 people a day and replacing them until the strike ended. The other side of this, though, is that most of these people are not necessarily doing this by choice. That's the sucky thing about unions. They suck people in and force them to follow their rules. If they cross the picket line, they'll suffer in the long-run, so that's not a realistic option. If you could identify the people driving the decisions, I'd fire them though. The strike has already been ruled illegal, so their recourse is fairly limited.
Hadn't thought of that. It'd be great if you could afford it! There are about 34,000 workers that are involved, in a very, very old system that has evolved to be operated this way over a very, very long time. I don't think just replacing them would be easy, and spending the money to have the system operated "hands off" would be a huge investment that would take a very, very long time to put into place. If this goes on much longer, the public will demand that something be done to change the whole system, one way or another. I can't believe the union has been this stupid. Had the offer been insulting (like we frequently see here in Texas), then there might be public sympathy, but it wasn't. What fools these transit workers be!
