Day 2 of the strike. P is riding into the city now with a coworker who is driving in at 3:30 am to avoid the HOV-4 rule. It took her 3.5 hours to get home yesterday: upper East Side to Penn Station, LIRR to Jamaica, then Flatbush, then a walk downtown. P’s brother-in-law is a subway conductor who is going on the picket line today not for the money, not for the pensions, but against “sharecropper managers” (his term) that don’t know how to treat their workers well. He’s going without the support of the union’s parent organization, the International.
I like to think that I’m a pretty sympathic guy, and I don’t like people enduring unnecessary hardships. I also understand how people in the public view tend to suffer the slings and arrows of their critics (and how every president since Reagan ends up picking up an independent counsel or two in their second term whatever they do). However, I have not seen so many instances of skirting responsibility in the last 24 hours:
- One co-worker: “All my friends that could give me a ride moved to New Jersey, so I can’t get to work.” Just about everybody else at work came up with a plan.
- Another co-worker: “I can’t find a taxi that will drive me over the bridge.” My boss walked all the way from Grand Central over the Brooklyn Bridge – 6 miles.
- TWU Union Leader: “we won’t sell out our unborn”, meaning snatching defeat from the hands of victory after the MTA started caving from their “final offer”. Could have kept on pressing….
- governor: “the professionals at the table will resolve this”. What professionals? What table? He’s kidding, right?
- president: to paraphrase — yes we wiretapped without warrants, even though previously we stated a warrant was always necessary. We didn’t break the law, and even if we did, we told a handful of Congresspeople, so that made it all good and legal, right? Do they have a problem with it? They can’t tell you, and you can’t find out.
This is ridiculous.