Tuesday Links
Transit Union Walkout [NY Times] NY Slowly Losing Creative Set [NY Times] Spit and Polish: Lobby Reno Debate [NY Magazine] Review: Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies [Village Voice] Tax Credit for Energy Improvements [Bankrate] Profits Down for Ratner [Brooklyn Papers]
Transit Union Walkout [NY Times]
NY Slowly Losing Creative Set [NY Times]
Spit and Polish: Lobby Reno Debate [NY Magazine]
Review: Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies [Village Voice]
Tax Credit for Energy Improvements [Bankrate]
Profits Down for Ratner [Brooklyn Papers]
Doctors and nurses have gone on strike.
browngirl,
no one is saying that conductors, etc. don’t work hard enough. In fact, people’s lives depend on it – and that’s what they are using as blackmail.
I work in a hospital in Bushwick, to which staff – and patients – couldn’t get. Surgeries cancelled, dialysis not done, more strain on the staff who was able to come.
This is a vital public service – imagine cops, paramedics, firefighters,nurses, doctors striking.
The MTA and the workers are jeopardizing lives, not just inconveniencing people.
And $50k guy now makes $53k. That’s equitable and sounds good to me.
Nativegal —
So make the $200K execs donate 6% of their income to their pension. They’ll get their base pay bumped up to $212K, or whatever. Make them pay for medical, and the same will happen. The bottom-line cost to the company is the same. That’s what I mean by compensation is compensation is compensation. And execs do, yes, get compensated way more than average workers all around. C’est la vie. If it somehow makes you feel better that the execs’ compensation takes the form of cash rather than a company contribution to a pension of health plan, OK, but I don’t see why.
If you feel rank-and-file workers should be compensated more overall, fine. But to say it makes anything better for the average that an exec should donate some percentage of income to pension, that’s not more equitable — it’s just moving around fungible numbers.
As for being a civil service employee meaning getting better benefits and having more job security than the private sector, I would argue that’s still true, only because those things have gotten crappier all around. In the private sector, pensions are disappearing altogether, while employment is mostly at-will.
Nativegal, I hear you, but that’s kind of like saying, if the guys making $200K are making $200K, why aren’t the guys who make $50K making $200K? Pensions, insurance, salary — they’re all forms of compensation.
I do understand the TWU wanting to hold the line on insurance contributions. (More, in fact, than being inflexible on pensions, which are a benefit that has grown far more valuable than when they were first granted, and thus deserve to be adjusted accordingly.) But to make the argument that it’s unfair for executives to be compensated better than workers — maybe it is, you’re kind of moving into Imagine territory there.
Posted by: linusvanpelt at December 20, 2005 05:13 PM
I don’t think you do hear me. Things can be equitable without being equal. If the guy making $50k is being asked to contribute 6% to his pension, so should the guy making $200k. If the guy making $200k is getting free medical, then so should the guy making $50k. After all, which one can most afford to pay?
As for the increasing value of their pensions, I would argue that they’ve paid for that increase in past years by not asking for larger wage increases when times were more flush. That used to be part of the deal. Being a civil service employee meant making less money, but having job security and better benefits. Private sector employment offered more money, but generally less generous benefits.
What exactly is so awful about the demands that they are making? It is unfortunate that people have to be inconvenienced, but what about the fact that the MTA has not exactly been honest about it earnings in the past.
No one is arguing that the people making 50k should make 200k but there should be some level of equity since all fo us do depend on the transit so much.
It is a hard job. My dad is a conductor and has worked his way from the bottom up, on days when rowdy kids have spit in his face when he opens his windows on entering the station. Rain, sleet, snow, hail, they have to get to work for all of us.
It is extremely symbolic to me that the people who literally make the city run, get no sympathy from those who depend on them. It shows that the very backbone of our country is being eroded every day by corporations who only seek to make a profit regardless of how it affects those who make it possible for their business to run.
My employer is doing nothing (55 employees). Everyone is on his/her own and there are only about 10 of us who live in the outer boroughs. During the 1980 strike, my employer at the time (45 employees) made car pool arrangements for all its employees, so everyone was able to get to work and back home every day for the duration of the strike.
Nativegal, I hear you, but that’s kind of like saying, if the guys making $200K are making $200K, why aren’t the guys who make $50K making $200K? Pensions, insurance, salary — they’re all forms of compensation.
I do understand the TWU wanting to hold the line on insurance contributions. (More, in fact, than being inflexible on pensions, which are a benefit that has grown far more valuable than when they were first granted, and thus deserve to be adjusted accordingly.) But to make the argument that it’s unfair for executives to be compensated better than workers — maybe it is, you’re kind of moving into Imagine territory there.
How’s everyone’s employers dealing with this?
Helping you get to work?
Making allowances for late? letting people leave early?
Makes me a bit mad here- Employer arranged vans for certain people – but rest told expected to show up as usual or charge time to accumulated leave.
I think if it were LIRR/MetroNorth they would have been more understanding.