This afternoon a judge put in place a $1,000,000 per day fine against the Transit Worker's Union.
A state judge this afternoon imposed a $1 million-a-day fine on the union of striking New York City transit workers, and said he would consider $1,000 fines against each member of the leadership.
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The fine levied today by Justice Theodore Jones of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn was issued in response to a lawsuit brought by the State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
I point this out not because of any animus towards Eliot Spitzer (I like him and will be happily supporting him for Governor) but as an antidote to a certain degree of mindless hero-worship that seems to go on at dKos.
Read on for my thoughts on the transit workers strike. . .
In many ways this is not a traditional labor action. Most people view strikes as a way for people with substandard wages and benefits to join the mainstream of society. But in this case, the TWU actually has above average wages and excellent benefits. This has spawned some degree of resentment among people with less attractive wage & benefit packages.
For myself, I'm a reluctant supporter of the strike. The MTA was originally asking for very substantial reductions in benefits for future TWU workers (current workers would not be affected). Whatever you think of the "absolute" appropriateness of, for instance, guaranteed retirement at age 55, no union exists to give back money or benefits to their employer. It would be silly to expect the TWU to do so.
The TWU is actually fighting for future workers rather than their current membership. Although there are some outstanding issues in terms of pay and working conditions for current employees, they don't seem to be the sticking point in the negotiations. The major issues revolve around creating a two-tier contract in which new employees would have less benefits and / or lower pay than current employees. The union opposes this on principal.
Still, I wish the union had not struck last night. Just as when a corporation announces a bunch of layoffs just before Christmas it doesn't matter much to the workers whether it happens then, or the 4th of January, it's still symbolic. A strike would have been crippling if carried out on the second of January (indeed, for me it would have been much more inconvenient) but by striking now the union is going to hit a lot of people in seasonal employment worse than if they had waited a week.
But the main reason I think they should have stayed at the bargaining table is that they actually extracted major concessions from the MTA last night. Gone is the attempt to raise the retirement age for new hires from 55 to 62. It's replaced with a two tier contribution system in which new hires would contribute six percent, rather than two percent, to their pension plans for ten years.
While this is still a two-tier contract, it clearly points the way for returning to a one-tier contract. One possibility is a meeting somewhere between two and six percent for all workers. Another is to extend the pension pay-in period beyond ten years. In any event, I think the union should have rewarded the MTA's concessions with a further extension of the deadline.
Given the progress made in negotiations, I doubt the strike is going to be much help in terms of resolving the dispute. Indeed, the head of the International Transport Worker's Union, of which the TWU is a local, apparently opposed the decision to strike. In the end, the strike will hurt a lot of people, not excluding union workers. I'm hoping for a speedy resolution.
The strike violates the Taylor Law, which prohibits public sector employees from striking and provides for a penalty of two days' pay for every day of the strike. I'm not quite sure of the logic behind the Taylor Law -- I understand it as applied to police, firefighters and medical workers, but it applies also to teachers, clerks, and transit workers.
In the case of non-essential workers the Taylor Law seems to me to be simply an attempt by the State to exempt itself from collective bargaining laws that apply to private business.
Whether transit workers ought to be considered equally essential as the police is, I suppose, a judgement call.
The injunction and fine sought by Eliot Spitzer is above and beyond the standard penalties suggested by the Taylor Law. The fine could be decisive -- the Union's strike fund is reported to be only $3.5 million.
Here at dKos, as one might expect, opinion has been running very strongly in favor of the workers. Indeed, there seems to be an almost unstated glee at the prospect of a strike (a glee not shared, as far as I can tell, by the vast majority of the strikers). Oddly enough, the large majority seems to need to manufacture an opposition to the strike (which seems to consist of about five people as far as I can tell).
I have to say I find the glee a little disturbing. I see the strike as an (almost) necessary outcome of the negotiations, but it doesn't give me a lot of pleasure to know that people from the outer boroughs can't get to work today, that retailers are going to lose significant sales, or that the strikers will be hit with substantial Taylor Law penalties.
Here's hoping for a speedy and fair resolution.