Jane Galt, deputy countries editor of Economist.com, writes about the MTA strike in New York:
The union, meanwhile, is running ads on local cable whining that they didn’t want to strike, they just had to because the MTA is so awful to them. This is not true. The union is very hard left, like transit unions in most places. I’m not sure why this should be; perhaps because most of the workers have to do very little to earn their pay. The train drivers don’t actually, y’know, drive; the rails take care of that. I’m told that they could easily be replaced with the kind of self-driving systems you see in airports, if the union weren’t so powerful. Admittedly, the conductors are highly skilled: it takes them years to learn to mumble into the announcement microphones in a secret language that no one in the entire world except them understands. But their main useful task appears to be sticking their heads outside the window to make sure no one’s limbs are sticking out of the train, a job that could be eliminated if idiots didn’t try to cram themselves through closing doors because they know the conductor will keep the train from driving off with their arm waving out the door. And the primary responsibility of the toll both workers is making sure that the line to buy Metrocards never gets shorter than ten feet. All of these jobs leave a great deal of time for contemplation, which the transit workers presumably spend eradicating every vestige of false consciousness.
The point being that the workers did indeed want a strike. They’ve been itching for it for years. That’s because they know they will win. In the private sector, the company would probably fire them and replace them with machines. But this is not the private sector, and the transit union controls not only a large number of votes, but a huge amount of funding. The City Council recently changed the law to allow political campaign contributions to come from individual locals, rather than the national union. That means that they can swing a huge chunk of change by getting locals from around the counry to donate to our council members. ….
But the union’s position is surprisingly unsympathetic, even to liberal New Yorkers. The workers make an average of $55K, more than what your average New York journalist makes. They have a lavish pension, on which they can retire at 55, and incredible benefits. And yet to judge from their interactions with ordinary New Yorkers, you would think that they were enslaved in Egypt. Everyone I know detects an expression of positive glee on the faces of the conductors who close the door just as you are getting to it, or the booth operator who makes you stand there, watching the trains come and go, while she stacks her pennies in orderly piles. No one I’ve talked to feels that they are entitled to more money, fewer disciplinary hearings, or better benefits. Everyone seems pretty eager to see the transit workers forced to wait until their sixties to retire like the rest of us. It’s not as if the bulk of the jobs are so physically demanding that it’s unreasonable to expect them to keep sitting in their booths for another ten years.
It won’t happen. The union will win, as unions always win in New York City. All this strike is doing is providing moderate excitement to stranded New Yorkers before the MTA caves. Sic semper tyrannis.
Her private sector remark is especially important. It is no coincidence that unions are almost all concentrated in the public sector as opposed to the private sector. The reason being that in the private sector, there are more checks and balances that make it difficult for a union to become overly powerful. The private sector, with its emphasis on competition and efficiency, greatly weakens the hands of both, unions and corporations, so they both have added pressure to cooperate with one another. For example, a corporation in the private sector has a strong incentive, provided the union gets overly demanding, to fight back for as long as possible and not give in, which in turn makes the union less likely to strike. In addition, in the circumstances where the union is overtly stubborn, the private employer has the added option of replacing the employees with machines, or ’scabs’, or even hiring less people than before. In addition, the company has the added risk of going bankrupt if unions become overly demanding (which, btw, is the case in many industries), this also serves as a check on the unions demands.
But such checks and balances are not there in the public sector. For one, most of the public sector industries are monopolies, or close to monopolies, and so the union doesn’t have the fear that the public sector will disappear. It can keep demanding more and more, and the service ultimately still has to be provided. In addition, the public sector is controlled much more by political factors than by competitive factors, meaning that since unions control a vast number of votes, they can elect people that will be more sympathetic to their cause. Politicians are also fearful of doing anything that damages the unions, like replacing inefficient positions with machines, or reducing employees highly generous pay, all out of a fear that the unions will retaliate and cause the politicians their jobs. Also, since these politicians are only interested in the short term, and since keeping the unions satisfied increases their chances to get elected, there is something of an unstable system created where unions can keep demanding more and more, in an upward spiral that eventually can result in people making 60K a year and being able to retire at 55, while their work only involves being a train driver that doesn’t even have to drive. Last but certainly not least, the public sector unions have an added benefit of hiding their costs from the consumer. For example, when a union becomes overly demanding to a supermarket, the supermarket can sometimes pass on some of those added costs to the consumer, and so the consumer directly sees the harm unions are doing to them, but in the public sector, those added costs are rarely passed on to the consumer, since public assistance is there primarily for those that can’t afford to pay for the service themselves, so those added costs comes out of the taxpayer, people like you and I who is always wondering why taxes keep going up.
I am not saying that this is good or bad (well, okay, it is bad, but that is not my point here), my only point here is to point out these fundamental differences, and give people a more balanced view of public sector unions, and the power they yield, all at the expense of the rest of us.
For more commentary on the MTA strike go here.
This strike was ridiculous. I am a NYer whose commute was murder thanks to this strike. In this case, the demand of not requiring new workers to contribute to their pension is obsene. Nobody gets this benefit anymore. It was not worth going on strike. Just some muscle flexing by Toissant.
That said there are some things in this article that I disagree with. Most NY’ers do not want drivers replaced by machines. The NYC subway system is not like the local airport terminal to baggage clain 1 mile tran line. Their are thousands of miles of tracks with about two dozen train lines all connecting and crossing tracks and switching. many of these switches can fail, and I would hate to have no humans to intervene in this situation or when there is heavy congestion, everyday, who will direct this, right now it is human beings who are in the TWU. As far as the conductor comment, I find this comment a little racially insesnsitive. The union has a disproportiantate immigrant/minority membership. The announcements can not be heard mainly because the audio system stinks, not because the announcers mumble.
As far as the door closings. Bacause the passengers are rude and selfish and stick there arms in the door to avoid closing, is not the workers fault. If the train drove off with an arm hanging out limbs would be severed is that a realistic goal.
To me the token booth attendant is an extra measure of security and at night the only one. I for one stand near the booth as I wait for a train. The NYC subway is probably the number 1 terrorist target in the country and they are cheaper than cops.
The work can be hazzardous the track workers are down there amongst electrified wires and rats with trains wizzing by.
As far as passing on the costs to the consumers, we do have the costs passed on. Our metrocards ain’t free, we pay for those increases. That said, the MTA is running such a large surplus this year that it gave out free metro cards for the holidays. Plus they were discvovered to have two sets of books last year, one for the unions and oversight boards and one actual, the real ones were much better than what was reported.
As far as contributing to city councilmen that point is moot since the state, not the city oversees the MTA. The city has no say in negotiations
Most of what you say, seems to me still fixable through machines, or at the very least, a reduction in personal. Maybe the MTA currently needs personal because it doesn’t use the state of the art equipment, which it didn’t buy because it was forced to have personal by the unions. It’s all incentives here.
With that said, I live in California, never been to New York, and don’t know shit about the MTA. My point here was not about MTA specifically, but about public sector unions more generally, and only using the MTA as an example where I saw appropriate.
Its not as simple as lay off the workers then we can modernize. The NYC transit system is over 100 years old. It would require an enormous investment to entirely modernize this system. This means more taxes. NY’ers are already the heaviest taxed citizens in the union, we do not need more taxes rammed down our throat.
My point is that the writer of the article that you posted to used a bunch of sweeping generalizations about this union and the MTA to make her point about the dangers of unions, many of them were not correct.
HP, you are correct. They can extract efficiencies from the system, but the unions would not let them. For example, you have the conductor who’s only function is to open/close the doors, make announcements and is there to ensure people don’t get stuck if the doors close on them. You would figure that the motorman (the person who drives the train) can perform those functions. The strange part is that the motorman just sits there waiting to get the signal to move the train to the next stop. While the system is old, it is big enough to spread the costs of modernizing and maximizing efficiencies. The savings from one less worker on each train in addition to other areas can easily pay for the system upgrades. Unfortunately, you have unions that will never allow it.
Michael is right about the two sets of accounting books. The MTA management has not been honest so its difficult for anyone to know where the finances really stand. They need to clean up their act as well.
One other thing, a lot of people I spoke to were very unhappy with these transit workers. The worst part of it all, the people who can least afford it were the ones who lost the most. Image if you are a low paid hourly worker like a mailroom clerk and you were unable to show up to work. Those folks were not pay.
These transit workers broke the law. It will be interesting to see if the class action lawsuits from restaraunts and others will severely damage the union financially or even destroy it. If it does, I certainly will be happy to see some change in the system.
They have already begun to remove the conductors from some train lines. it does not require union approval. The reason it is not happening throughout the system is because of demands from the riders, the customers they are serving.
Have you ever been in a train late at night. All of the cars are virtually empty except for the first car where the motorman sits and the middle cars where the conductor sits. People prefer to have the conductors available with their radios to notify law enforcement officials of any crime.
My $0.02: I grew up in New York and lived there until I was 30. When I talk to my friends and family there, they say that the strike was plain wrong. They’re angry at, and also sympathetic to, the striking workers–they believe that the workers were caught between the union leadership, who lied to them, and the MTA, which is out to screw them. My friends and family say that the issues that the union were fighting for were simply not worth striking over.
Note that this is coming from people whom HP would likely label as “liberal,” and therefore could be presumed to be predisposed to be sympathetic to the strike.