It ends. Yay!
I was driven in this morning by an fancy-ass towncar, sent to my door at 7:30 this morning. Although I am a lowly temp, my boss was having an early morning meeting presenting the budget to the chair of the company (Fortune 500, baby!) and she wanted me in early just in case. So I got to see how the other half lives. The answer? Really well. The funniest part? Because you need 4 people in a car to get below 96th street, blue note and azulita bundled out of bed at 7:30 and drove the few blocks down to 95th with me, and then went back home again. Much respect to them.
I did skate home though, my moment of glory passed.
So some thoughts about this whole situation.
Needless to say, we at BBD were all for the TWU. If they sold "Team TWU" shirts at Fred Segal we would totally buy them. The MTA is a horrible, rage-inducing, corrupt agency that lies (literally!) to the public on the regular. A couple of years ago it came to light that they were keeping
two sets of books so they could plead poverty and raise the fare. I fucking hate the MTA. Hate.
What I also hate is all these ignorant assholes I've been seeing on the TV saying crazy time bullshit about the strike and the workers. Look - working in the subway is a shitty job. You deserve to be paid well for it. The very idea that 45K is an outrageous amount for a transit worker to make is insane. This is New York City. It's mad expensive. 45K here is like about 25K elsewhere. Why the fuck can't they make that much? If we assign value by how important a job is, the TWU has just proved that they are vital to this city and deserve to be compensated accordingly. The job is so shitty that MTA workers die (DIE!) much earlier than the rest of the population. Which is part of why raising their retirement age is such a big deal. Most of them don't live that far past 62. How fucking crazy is that?
If I read one more 28 year old currency trader bitch about how in capitalism you don't get a good pension and the TWU should just suck it up, and he doesn't know how he'll get from downtown to midtown and his holiday shopping plans have been messed up and those transit workers are so selfish, I gonna puke. Or kill. What the hell is more selfish than people who think that their own comfort or shopping is more important than the rights of future generations of blue collar workers? Because that's what they were striking about. Not for themselves - they got more or less what they were asking for - but for the workers yet to come. They struck because they refused to screw the next generation of transit workers with a worse contract than they themselves have. Can you imagine? People putting their asses on the line for others and not only themselves?
Contrast this with the complaints that they should enter reality and see that no one gets benefits like that anymore. WTF? Why the hell should we applaud the race for the bottom? Why should all benefits be slowly stripped away, even in times of prosperity? This city is the economic engine of the richest country in the history of the world and we are honestly trying to say that people who perform vital work should not be allowed to retire with a little bit of comfort? Come the fuck on. Is Wal-mart what we want to be the model for all employment? Should we applaud a future where there is no safety net because it allows corporations to make more money? Is that what we all want for our county? No safety net but record profits for Exxon? Instead shouldn't we all try to make our benefits better? Maybe pay the bosses a little less and the workers a little more? Look - if you don't get benefits like the TWU does, don't hate on them. You have two choices: become a transit worker or ORGANIZE so maybe you can get some bennies too. But don't give me shit about how the transit workers don't deserve shit. They deserve good life by virtue of being human beings, and so do you. They don't want to settle.
There's also a major racial component. NY1 did a poll that confirmed what you always suspected: white people blame the workers and colored people blame the management. By overwhelming margins, black and latinos in NY side with the TWU, whereas white folk feel just the opposite. Note that the TWU is mostly black and latino, and the MTA management (not to mention our billionaire acting like a prick these days mayor) are of course white.
Other unions are watching this. The TWU is one of the most radical and activist unions around, and if they cave things will be dire indeed. That's why the PBA, the teachers Union, and assorted others (including my old union, DC37) supported them.
So which side are you on?
