Big Apple Walkout

The New York City transit worker union decided to walk off the job this morning.

Such strikes are illegal, not to mention disruptive to the tune of $400 million a day. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has a serious problem on his hands. Some of us are old enough to remember, with amusement, Ronald Reagan's response to the striking air traffic controllers in the early 80s: "You're fired." But that may not be a practical solution in this case.

When you compare TWU salaries and compensation to similar public sector jobs their expectations seem a little outlandish, even considering the high cost of living in Nueva York. If labor has a role in today's economy (and on that score reasonable people can disagree) then I think these types of belligerent, bet-the-farm protest actions might actually hurt the future efforts of unions who might have a legitimate gripe in a dispute with unfair employers.

Because the people of NYC are royally pissed, in that unmistakable, five boroughs type of way. One of the white-hot spots in the blogosphere today is the comments section of this Transit Union blog, where people are expressing their opinion of the strike in no uncertain terms. It's very cold in the city today, and a lot of people need to go many different places.

Update: Revisionism just doesn't work. They edited the comments page at the Union blog, but somebody had the good sense to archive it.