December 20, 2005

THE NYC TRANSIT WORKERS' UNION has an unofficial blog, and it's getting an earful in the comments. Here are some excerpts:

[S]econdly, if i could meet the masterminds behind this strike, i'd personally spit in each of their faces. I know fifty people at my campus who now cannot return to their families for the holiday season, and are being forced to spend their break in a hotel off campus until the transit system is running again. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves doing something this stupid this time of the year. Every single worker participating in the strike is extremely selfish and short sighted.

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You guys really have a lot of balls. All you do is drive around in circles. Your job isn't hard at all. You get paid as much as cops and firemen, while much more as teachers. Something is wrong. You're asking for way too much here.

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I am thoroughly disgusted with the TWU. Who are you to think you're above the law? Who are you to take well-paying jobs (for your education levels) serving millions of people and then hold us hostage by striking?

I have a 16 month old son who will be taken to day care today in his STROLLER. In 20 degree weather. I am paid hourly and will lose today's salary.

But they're standing up for working people!

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has to be asking himself, "What would Rudy do?"

(More here).

UPDATE: Apparently someone woke up long enough to remove the comments. [LATER: CraigsList removed the link, which was to an item featuring pictures of transit workers asleep at their posts.]

Meanwhile, reader Robert Burnham emails:

Transit strike paralyzes city? It's just another reason not to live at such high densities.

Go burbs!

Go sprawl!

Indeed.

MORE:

The city's subway and bus workers went on strike Tuesday for the first time in more than 25 years, stranding millions of commuters, holiday shoppers and tourists at the height of the Christmas rush. A judge promptly slapped the union with a $1 million-a-day fine.

State Justice Theodore Jones leveled the sanction against the Transport Workers Union for violating a state law that bars public employees from going on strike.

Attorneys for the city and state had asked Jones to hit the union with a "very potent fine" for defying the law.

"This is a very, very sad day in the history of labor relations for New York City," the judge said in imposing the fine.

I hope it's a teachable moment. Meanwhile, bring on the robots:

Already, trains in Paris, Cairo, and Calcutta operate with computerized or automated systems. In Paris, the Meteor Project was launched in 1998, with an automatic piloting system that controls the train line’s traffic, regulates speed, manages alarm devices, and allows for traffic of automatic and traditional conductor trains on the same line.There have been no serious accidents reported since this system deployed in the late 1990s, and more than a billion people have been transported. Computers make the trains run on time and they don’t threaten to walk off the job. All of us are replaceable, but some are more quickly replaceable than others. Already,the MTA spends 80% of its operating budget on personnel expenses.

I, for one, welcome our new robot employees.

STILL MORE: That airbrush thing doesn't work as well as it used to. Here's an archive of the comments, courtesy of Dartblog.