The Working File

Last week the Metropolitan Transit Authority decided to punt its obligations, and agreed to refer its new labor negotiations to an arbitration panel.  With skyrocketing deficits and the promise of higher fares, higher taxes, and even a new tax on payrolls, they made no effort to confront the union over wages, work rules, or pensions.  As noted in an opinion piece, MTA’s Fatal Dodge,  by E.J. McMahon and Nicole Gelinas in yesterday’s Post:

True, arbitration means the Jan. 16 expiration of the current Local 100 contract will bring no repeat of the December 2005 transit strike - but it also means the MTA has blown its only real chance to reduce projected operating costs and free some existing resources for vital infrastructure improvements over the next few years.

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The MTA this week will beg Albany for more than $1 billion a year in new taxes and tolls to close its huge budget gaps and provide a stable source of new funding for the transit system’s operating and capital needs. But, in the wake of last week’s arbitration announcement, it appears too much of any new money will be flowing into the same old bottomless pit.

Earlier, on Jan 9, the Post wrote in an editorial, Let TWU Share Riders’ Pain:

The blue-ribbon Ravitch Commission envisions fare hikes paired with steep new payroll taxes. Yet the commission, for obvious reasons, simply assumes a new TWU contract with annual raises of 3.5 percent. Hold that number to zero, according to sources in the know, and straphangers would be in for a fare hike that’s some 25 cents smaller. Or the MTA would have the cash to forestall corrosive service cuts. Either way, it’s time for the TWU to share the burden.

I’m not sure what the “obvious reasons” are, even though the Post seems to think they aren’t valid.  It is obvious, however, that those charged with running New York government are both incompotent and, at best, borderline corrupt when it ocmes to their obligations to represent all of their constituents, and not just the government worker unions.  The MCmahon/Gelinas piece reveals that my new state senator Addabo is among the union lackeys:

Meanwhile, arbitration gives the TWU three more years of breathing room to recover from the strike, with backing from Albany allies like former City Councilman and newly-minted state Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Queens) - who was endorsed by Local 100 and has supported the TWU’s “Taylor Law reform” agenda.

Not that the union didn’t already have friends in key places: The governor’s father, labor lawyer Basil Paterson, was Local 100’s negotiator in 2005, and political consultant Bill Lynch has advised both Toussaint and David Paterson.

With the collapse of the financial industry that allowed New York, barely, to have such a bloated and inefficient government, I fear that we are going down the road taken by Detroit and New Orleans.