Home Early
The Transit Strike has had an unintended benefit for yours truly that I intend to enjoy loudly and unashamedly. Because Kathleen depends upon her law firm's vans to get to work - and to get home - she had to leave the office at 5:30 yesterday afternoon. Why, when she goes in to the office on weekends she doesn't leave that early! I shall pretend that we're simply having a long weekend until the strike ends. I know that a lot of people are in terrible jams because of the strike, and that this is probably not going to be the most happily-remember Christmas season ever, but I refuse to regret the opportunity to pass normal evenings with my dear wife.
Who, the night before last, forgot that M le Neveu was coming for dinner. "Start without me," she said at twenty past nine. Well, I really didn't want to do that. I don't think that anyone ever wants to do that. So I temporized and she hustled and we sat down at ten, by which time my appetite was a shambles.
I'm inclined to sympathize with the strikers. Working conditions on New York's subways are not very pleasant, and the entire system ought to be rebuilt from scratch. The MTA - a board of flunkies who do the bidding of the elected officials who appoint them, thus deflecting all accountability to the Crab Nebula - has been squeezing workers harder while failing to take infrastructural problems seriously. I mentioned revenge fantasies yesterday in another connection, but declined to reveal them. Here I will say that I think a sort of Place de la Révolution event, with a few guillotines in the public squares, and tumbrils full of the MTA board, the TLC commissioners, and all the taxi-medallion owners who do not drive their own cabs. Oh, and the people who're supposed to bring this dump into the twenty-first century with public toilets! An end to governmental fecklessness, say I!
Comments
Sorry, but perhaps my three-hour trip home last night has made me a tad sour.
If'n you accept a job with the MTA, part of the pact is that you do not strike. You know that going in: the Taylor Law is no secret.
You get a pension, job security and health benefits (for which you do not pay).
To do this on the eve of Christmas is the work of thugs. Mr. Bloomberg is right. The loss of revenue hurts all of us: the City's own finances, the quality of life when smaller businesses go out of business due to this illegal strike, the stress this is causing those of us who have to get to work and then home, etc. Kathleen and I are lucky; we get transportation. Many people do not. And they lose wages and jobs.
The MTA has also handled this as badly as anyone can imagine. That they allowed the contract to expire on 12/15 is the first mistake. Then the give-away to riders during a year in which you negotiate, then announce a false surplus of $1bil, all of it stuipid. I hope this ends Pataki's aspirations: he has handed unions concessions to get votes and all the unions have remembered that. And Kalikow, well, there are no words.
There is alot of fault to hand out here, alot of politicians and political appointees who have not acted in the public's interest.
BUT the bottom line is that the strike is illegal and I hope the International TWU steps in as they can, rids the Union of Toussaint and gets the subways running. Otherwise this could go on until the New Year.
Posted by: PPOQ | December 21, 2005 12:42 PM
Ah, enfin ! On sort les guillotines afin de saisir l'attention des malfaiteurs — je suis pour.
Posted by: Édouard | December 22, 2005 08:17 AM