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December 20, 2005

Unionized Critical Infrastructure vs Responsibility

This is what can happen when the public transportation system of a highly populated major city is permitted to be unionized.

NEW YORK - Commuters trudged through the freezing cold, rode bicycles and shared cabs Tuesday as New York's bus and subway workers went on strike for the first time in more than 25 years and stranded millions of riders at the height of the Christmas rush. A judge slapped the union with a $1 million-a-day fine.

Certain jobs entail a higher degree of responsibility than others, one of these keeping an entity like the Metropolitan Transit Authority(MTA), the vast system of subways and buses that keeps the City of New York up and running, well, up and running. When you go to work for such a concern it is a lot different from selling clothes, running a machine in a factory, building cabinets, plumbing or repairing computers. It is an occupational field in which millions of people are depending upon you to get to and from work, including thousands of employees of other city agencies that are essential to the day-to-day operation of the giant machine that is the city government. You know this going in, and you know, just from years of residing in the city, that there will occasionally be differences with the agency that employs you.

You also know, given the profound necessity of your city agency as vital infrastructure, that going on strike is against the law...

If you have a problem with that, don't take the job.

Now we know, of course, that union members have to do as their leaders tell them, which puts them in the middle of a management-to-management dispute. They belong to the union, but they work, in this case, for the MTA. For the City of New York. For the millions of taxpayers in the five boroughs of New York. But they owe their allegience to the union.

So maybe critical infrastructure shouldn't even have the option of being unionized, as the Armed Forces don't have the option of same, and for good reason -- in some situations, for the good of the public, certain organizations should only serve one master.

The $1,000,000.00 per day fine imposed against the transit workers' union for striking, in my opinion, is well justified, just as Ronald Reagan was justified in firing the air traffic controllers during his term as President. Their strike is not only costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is negatively affecting some 7 million citizens every day it continues.

The strike over wages and pensions came just five days before Christmas, at a time when the city is especially busy with shoppers and tourists.

The heavy penalty could force the union off the picket lines and back on the job. Under the law, the union's 33,000 members will also lose two days' pay for every day they are on strike, and they could also be thrown in jail.

Go for it!

There are a lot of unemployed workers who would love New York City jobs but can't get them because of long waiting lists. Maybe this is a good time to create some vacancies, pass a law prohibiting union involvement in the city government's critical infrastructure venues and rebuild the transit system's employee roster from the sizeable pool of men and women on those waiting lists.

Posted by Seth at December 20, 2005 05:34 PM