NY transit strike

[Susquehanna Birder]

Regarding merit pay increases, they're bullshtein.  How do you incentivize a subway trash collector?  This labor does not admit of contant improvement.  You either do the job, or you don't.  If you do it, then the city is grateful for your necessary service,  recognizes that it's a thankless job in a dark hole, and pays you enough to raise a family.  Or at least it should.

Okay, I see your point, so I'll meet you in the middle there, and suggest that it's fair for these people to get an automatic COLA of something in the 3.5% range, similar to what the typical private-sector worker gets in a merit system. But then they also need to start kicking in for health care, like the rest of us.

[Philly_Crew]

Sounds to me like the MTA needs to be blown up.  From the NY Press:

"The MTA has made a lot of ugly news in the last few years—a threatened strike, contentious fare hikes, a $13.5 billion debt reorganization and persistent allegations of corruption. But the most portentous blow to the authority came just a few weeks ago, in a scandal that was widely reported but the scope and meaning of which have yet to be seriously explored publicly.

The story began when the MTA's security director, an ex-cop with a sterling reputation named Louis Anemone, went public with complaints that his efforts to investigate corruption within the MTA were being hindered by the MTA leadership. Anemone claimed that he and deputy Nicholas Casale had uncovered a pattern of bid-rigging and cost overruns that cost the Authority $100 million.

When the two sought a meeting with George Pataki to demand an independent investigation, the governor's answer was an unceremonious EXPLETIVE DELETED: Not only did he refuse Anemone's request, but he deadpanned that he had "absolute confidence" in the MTA leadership.

Pataki had plenty of reasons to have confidence in the MTA leaders. According to New York State Election commission data, eight of the MTA board members, including Chairman Peter Kalikow and Vice Chairman David Mack, donated a total of $135,670 just to George Pataki's campaign in the last election cycle.
...
The MTA is a Pataki operation. And the MTA scandal should be a Pataki scandal.

"The MTA...is a shadow government," says Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who's been organizing hearings on reform of the MTA. "Its finances are off budget. It's just not subject to the normal oversight of democratic institutions."
...
This neverending flow of borrowed money, coupled with the network of obvious financial and personal relationships, accomplishes two things: It makes incumbency nearly irresistible, and dissent and oversight—as recently demonstrated—almost impossible.

Louis Anemone and Nicholas Casale weren't the first MTA whistleblowers, but they've certainly been the loudest.

Three years ago, then-inspector general of the MTA, Roland Malan, sent a letter to then-MTA chairman Virgil Conway complaining that he had been hampered in his investigation into a $97 million contract to renovate the Midtown tunnel. That contract had been won by Silverite Construction, which had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars through various channels to Pataki and Republican candidates. Shortly before his term ended, he closed his investigation, and no indictments were ever handed down in the case.

"I closed the investigation because I didn't want my successor to be in the same position I was in," says Malan, who is now retired and lives in Washington state.
...
Art Harmon was an auditor for MTA projects in the 80s who claims that he uncovered millions of dollars in waste before he was fired and his audits were terminated. He found a few friendly ears to take up his case after his dismissal—former Queens councilwoman Julia Harrison once sent a letter to Pataki on his behalf, demanding an inquiry—but ten years later, he is still trying to find an audience for what he thinks are urgent grievances.
...
Assemblyman Brodsky, who is pushing a bill that would create an independent auditor of the MTA, puts it bluntly: "The books are closed," he says.

The MTA's unique quasi-governmental legal structure makes its finances even more impenetrable than your average publicly traded corporation. The authorities have evolved over the years. Once upon a time, a bridge was built, it paid for itself in tolls, and that was it. Then there were innovations in the structure of authorities that allowed high-earning projects to pay for the losers. Nowadays the MTA as a whole doesn't even completely pay for itself: It can borrow money for its own projects, and through "service contract" bonds, part of its debt can be paid off by general tax revenue. Despite this, its books are more or less closed, both to voters and to investors."

http://www.nypress.com/16/16/news&columns/feature.cfm

[fansince61]

Fox News..strike over

[stillupfront]

They should be fired and the union ctushed, like RWR did with the air traffic controllers.

[fansince61]

They should be fired and the union ctushed, like RWR did with the air traffic controllers.

There was/is only one Renaldus Magnus...knowone else has the clarity to see issues for the people

[stillupfront]

They should be fired and the union ctushed, like RWR did with the air traffic controllers.

There was/is only one Renaldus Magnus...knowone else has the clarity to see issues for the people

That is the sad truth.

[Diomedes]

Reagan was a bad man.  I piss on his memory.

in other news, from the New York Times front page today (Steven Greenhouse reporting), the new contract is pretty much what the TWU wanted, with some reasonable concessions to the MTA (paying some of their health cost for example, as Sus argued they should.)

He was excoriated on tabloid front pages [the insidious liberal media, again!! - Dio] and by the mayor and governor. As thousands streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge on a frigid night during last week's transit strike, someone in a car yelled out his name, prefacing it with a curse.

But now, a day after details of an agreement between the transit workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were spelled out, Roger Toussaint, the union's president, seems to have emerged in a far better position than seemed likely just a few days ago.

Mr. Toussaint, whose back appeared to be against the wall last week, can boast of a tentative 37-month contract that meets most of his goals, including raises above the inflation rate and no concessions on pensions. Indeed, several fiscal and labor experts said yesterday that Mr. Toussaint and his union appeared to have bested the transit authority in their contract dispute.

The authority did not come away empty-handed, however, as it obtained a major concession: For the first time, the 33,700 transit workers will pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.

But if there is a real winner in the walkout that hobbled the city at the height of the holiday season, it is the union members who went out on strike, and the man who led them.

"It's a good contract for the union in that it does keep in place, for the most part, benefits that are extremely favorable to them," said Steven Malanga, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, who called last week for firing the strikers. "For them, you can say this is a great deal."

When Mr. Toussaint appeared before television cameras at 11 p.m. on Tuesday to announce the settlement, he commented little except to read an impressive list of new worker-friendly provisions: raises averaging 3.5 percent a year, the creation of paid maternity leave, a far better health plan for retirees, a much-improved disability plan, the adoption of Martin Luther King's Birthday as a paid holiday, and increased "assault pay" for bus drivers and train operators who are attacked by passengers.

Then Mr. Toussaint announced a big surprise: Some 22,000 [about two-thirds of TWU members -- Dio] workers will each receive thousands of dollars in reimbursements for what are considered excess pension contributions; for several years, these workers paid more toward their pensions than other workers. For those workers, that money will easily offset the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most of them face for taking part in the illegal strike. The union itself could still face a $3 million fine that a judge ordered because of the 60-hour strike.

"The union did especially well, all things considered," said David L. Gregory, a labor relations expert at St. John's University. "Toussaint got everything he needed, and he also got what he needed in terms of the bigger picture. With the strike, he mollified the radical left in his union and helped placate the middle of his rank and file who were demanding to be treated with dignity and respect."

All this is not to say that the transportation authority did not achieve some of its major goals. By getting the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, to agree to have subway and bus workers pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health premiums, the authority took an important step to rein in soaring benefit costs. That provision is expected to save the authority $32 million a year. Not only that, the union agreed that its workers' contribution toward their health premiums might increase if the authority's health costs continued to climb.

At first glance, the authority seems to have embarrassed itself over pensions, the issue for which it appeared to draw its firmest line in the sand.

To bring its fast-rising pension costs down to earth, the authority first pushed to raise the retirement age for future employees, to 62 from 55, and then demanded that future workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions. Finally, after Mr. Toussaint said he would never sell out the union's "unborn," the authority pulled its pension demand off the table - a move that state mediators proposed to persuade the union to end its walkout.

more at New York Times website.  (not gonna link, cuz you gotta sign up to get access.)

[stillupfront]

Reagan was a bad man.  I piss on his memory.

You really know how to get me going.

I won't fall for the bait, but will tell you that Ronald Reagan was a GIANT of a HUMAN BEING. Without a doubt the greatest president in our nation's history.

[Sgt PSN]

You arguing with him = you taking the bait. 

[stillupfront]

You arguing with him = you taking the bait. 

But I am not getting upset.

[Sgt PSN]

You arguing with him = you taking the bait. 

But I am not getting upset.

Gooooooooooosefrabba   

[Diomedes]

Ronald Reagan was a GIANT abortion of a HUMAN BEING. Without a doubt the worst president in our nation's history, except for George W. Bush.

Fixed. 

But I am not getting upset.

Keep telling yourself that, fascist.  You've already proven a propensity to believe what you hear over and over, so the future looks good..

[stillupfront]

Ronald Reagan was a GIANT abortion of a HUMAN BEING. Without a doubt the worst president in our nation's history, except for George W. Bush.

Fixed. 

But I am not getting upset.

Keep telling yourself that, fascist.  You've already proven a propensity to believe what you hear over and over, so the future looks good..

I am a facist because I believe that the man who SINGLE HANDEDLY won the Cold War, restored the National Pride lost during the failed Carter Administration, and radically simplified and made more fair the Federal Tax system a Giant and the greatest president in our history?

You're a fleshpop.

[methdeez]

Don't forget bribing Iran with weapons to hold on to American hostages!
That was truly one of our finer hours.

[Diomedes]

The invasion of Panama was right up there.  Add in supporting South American death squads generally.  Democracy was okay according to Reagan, but like W., only if the people elect a ruler who will sell them out to American business.  Reagan stood for social darwinism and giving breaks to the already extremely wealthy.  He was a nightmare.  It's too bad Hinckley didn't get the job done.

Nevermind that he was running the country while showing strong symptoms of Alzheimers.  For once, when a president said "I don't recall," he may not have been lying.