While Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson is facing long odds and a distinct financial disadvantage in his efforts to unseat Michael Bloomberg, Thompson is earning himself some powerful union friends. Today, Michael Grynbaum explores how the TWU Local 100 arm has become a de facto powerhouse for Thompson. Because Bloomberg has developed an antagonistic toward the TWU and because he continues to oppose the mandated 11 percent raises the transit workers won in binding arbitration earlier this year, the TWU has taken to the streets to oppose Bloomberg’s push for a third term. I wonder, though, if the TWU’s actions on behalf of Thompson are simply coming about because they oppose Bloomberg, and I fear for the future the state of transit labor relations if Bloomberg succeeds in beating Thompson. Currently enjoying a 16-point lead, Bloomberg won’t take kindly to the TWU’s outspoken opposition.
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Bloomberg doesn’t take kindly to any opposition. That’s why it’s so important to defeat him. First, you take down the tyrant. Then, once you have restored democracy, you worry about the other issues.
I’ll take the benevolent dictator in Bloomberg over the “democracy” in Albany any day. Let’s remember who’s stood in the way of every transit improvement in the past 8 years.
Who’s stood in the way? Let’s see: Pataki, who hates the city; Bloomberg, who’s defunded SAS in favor of the 7 extension giveaway, and whose political actions have made it harder to pass congestion pricing; the Senate Republicans, who stalled the MTA bailout; Brodsky, who thinks CP is unfair to his ultra-rich constituents.
Bloomberg needs to break the TWU the way Margaret Thatcher broke the coal miners’ union. Of course it won’t happen because TWU has some very powerful friends in Albany. On the other hand, suppose Thompson wins. He will quickly realize that what’s good for the city is bad for the unions, and vice versa- except in the very unlikely case that he will increase the city’s funding for the MTA in a way where New Yorkers benefit and the TWU is suckered into believing that it benefits. But given current trends of investing our tax money into public workers’ pensions rather than tangible products of labor, I doubt that will happen.
Here’s what Thatcher did to the coal miners: she demanded layoffs and pay cuts. The union went on strike. Thatcher imported coal from Poland instead and started developing the North Sea oil fields (generating windfall profits to a handful of oil executives in the process). Eventually the entire coal industry collapsed.
I completely agree that if Bloomberg destroys mass transit in New York, the TWU will wither. I’m sure that’ll be an epic win for the city – after all, driving cars in gridlocked traffic is plenty of fun.
Unionists have this bizarre belief that workers are “born” into their jobs. Guess what? The coal workers found something else to do, and Britain gained a couple decades of energy independence. It won’t last, of course, but at least Thatcher took her role as defender of those who pay union members’ salaries seriously, rather than cave to every demand the way New York City’s leaders (who are largely from the pro-union “activist” class) do. I’m no great fan of Bloomberg, but if he does his job and tells voters the truth about pensions and health care–that we are ridiculously close to financial disaster and in no way can fund all these outrageous promises–that is a GOOD thing.
The point is not that the coal workers became unemployed. The point is that Thatcher succeeded only because there were substitutes for coal. There’s no substitute for the subway.
More importantly, the unions provide a check on government power. They’re not the only group that does – neighborhood groups, community activists, and multiple branches of governments provide checks as well. But every leader who tries to crack down on those groups is one who’s interested in power for the sake of power. Thatcher, with her support of Pinochet, and her fondness for military invasions and Victorian values, was such a leader. So is Bloomberg, with his beliefs that term limits only apply to other people and that it’s okay to buy votes.
kudos to alon for taking the time to answer the corporatists, who have this bizarre belief that managers are “born” into their authority.
about thatcher:
“Even as it was, with the unburied dead and ‘Crisis, what crisis?’ and so forth, Labour increased its vote in the general election the following May [1979] by 75,000 compared with October 1974. The Tories’ majority of 43 seats was owed mainly to defections from the Liberals, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the National Front. Within two years Britain had fallen into its biggest recession since the 1930s and opinion polls registered Margaret Thatcher as the most unpopular prime minister since polling began.” (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n16/jack03_.html)
ah yes, the national front. certainly of a piece with the likes of pinochet, so i guess you could say she was consistent.
Even in the 1980s, Thatcher wasn’t popular. She had with a 40-something percent plurality of the popular vote; she only got a majority in Parliament because the opposition was split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.