The MTA Strike Post

I'm not in New York now, so I was debating on whether to comment on the strike. Now that it is de facto over, I figured I'd put my two cents in.

Myopia + Classism = Distress

There's been myopia on both sides, but mainly on the MTA board for letting it get to this point. Seriously. They have a billion dollar surplus and they made it known that they had a billion dollar surplus and had workers operating without a contract. The oligarchs on the board displayed a "let them eat cake" disdain throughout this whole process. Now, I'm not saying that Toussaint is an example of the latter part of his name. He did not succeed at all in communicating with the members and the general public on their grievances, the majority of which (especially pensions) I think were valid. Often forgotten in the rants of the disgruntled was that a sticking point was to raise the contributions of new hires from 2% to 6%. Honestly, that's a wise consideration. So many of the problems of this world are due to people only looking out for themselves and not willing to care about those who will follow them.

I'm not saying at all that I would support crippling New York City's infrastructure, but I believe that this was a last resort option that was deployed only when the talks reached an impasse, which indeed they had. Why did it have to get to the point of both sides playing "quién es más macho?" Why didn't they decide to shove the bravado aside and actually work on a deal that both sides could agree upon?

There never is a perfect deal, but just ignoring it will always make it worse.

Once people start to realise that being short-sighted has gotten us into many messes in the past, then we'll actually be able to move on.