so, seems like the transit strike is gonna happen.
p_gunn
2,284 Posts
get yr bikes out, kiddies...
p_gunn
2,284 Posts
Comments
transit workers have a tough job...but they get paid really good starting out and have lots of benefits and guaranteed yearly raises...so go to work mta!
if they get raises we all end up having to pay for it too.
no sweat.
I'd better not have to run home tonight.
Good luck getting around today, folls.
I commute in on the PATH from Jersey and get off at Chiristopher Street. Usually, at any time of day, but especially in the morning, the Christopher Street stop is
Today there was a line to get in cause of the special route their running to WTC. I work on Hudson and Houston, and it's usually pretty busy, but today it's eerily quiet outside, kind of like it was like after 9/11. Good luck everyone.
Are you talking about the union???
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Wake up and smell the stagflation people.
please, motherfucker. those mta people sit on theirs ass drinking coffee and act like it's a huge favor for them to answer your questions. fuck em. its below freezing today.
Yo folks!!!!!!
MTA employees chose the route of slow and steady. Give 30 years of your life, clock off and get the benefits. YOU (including me), college-educated RICH RICH RICH, mainly white people, have elected to enter into the capitalist crapshoot that gives us the possiblity of massive payoff in much shorter time. And you're calling the union workers greedy???
The arrogance against people who drive you around for a living is pretty sad. You are truly disconnected from the skreets.
you are truly disconected from a job.
first off. i never said they were greedy. i said this was extortion.
second, i don't need you to tell me shit about whos rich, sasche. remember, i know you.
I done my 6 months work for this year, thanks.
You'd think a strike would make people appreciate things like public services. I say you should kick back smoke a blunt and enjoy civil society while you still got it.
This is backdoor privatisation folks, if you think you're bitchin now, wait another 10 years and you'll be nostalgic for the early 21st C.
Nice edit! No you don't really know me, remember you thought I owned a bar in Williamsburg?
The fare hike was ruled illegal. Perhaps if you say pretty please the MTA will reverse it?
Going to college and starting low on the pay ladder does not make you working class!
I will always remember a quote from a journalism major who worked with me at a dotcom in 2000. "I voted for the dumb guy because the smart guy wanted to fuck with my bank account" He was a couple of years out of college and making 33k, which for dotcom was pittance. What a fool.
There are obviously some folks around here who believe religiously in the American Dream. Keep struggling for your crumbs off the table.
But bitching on the first day means the evildoers have already won!
dude, here's where you lost me... these delineations are hopelessly outdated... then what does make one working class? spending my 2 hour lunch break in a bar doing coke like the w'burg bridgeworkers? wearing dickies pants unironically? drinking bud instead of brooklyn lager? calling a waitress "sweetheart"? help me out here... if a teacher making 35K a year is white collar and non-working class, yet a contracter making 60 K a year is blue collar and working class, that's fucked. i would say going to college and starting low on the pay ladder DOES make you working class b/c
a) basically ANYONE can go to college at this point in american history
b) thus, having a college degree is no leg up on any job.
trust me on this, i went to NYU, and i have NEVER gotten any job b/c of it. actually, the majority of the jobs i've had since graduating have been physical labor (valeting, bike messengering).
c) there are ALOT of people trapped in dead end "white collar" jobs. or are the MTA guys working harder than some secretary who makes 28k a year? or some mail room clerk making 24k? (my friend has been a mail room clerk at a place in boston for 6 years, i don't see them handing him the keys to the exec. wash room anytime soon... his father works for the city and will be set up whenever he wants to retire due to his pension plan. my friend is thinking about quitting and getting a city job)
d) i see many people i knew and grew up with where one sibling went to college and the other decided to be a plumber or a cop and i'll tell you, the tradesmen are living much better than the college grad.
now, the deal with this strike is that most people have no sympathy, b/c if most people don't make less than transit workers do (and i sure do, and i don't mean like yearly, i mean per hour), they certainly don't have the benefits that transit workers have. i've never had medical insurance from a job in my life. i get hit by a bus tomorrow, i'm fucked.
now, the issue is, me, i think everyone should have the benefits and pension plan the transit workers have. i think it's fucked that in america we don't take care of each other like that. that's why i can't get mad at this strike. but, being that these workers have way more benefits then i'll ever have from any job probably ever in my life (unless i move to europe), i can't have too much sympathy either.
I agree with you about the changing definition of WORKING CLASS... much to discuss on that front, but you lost me in the last couple paragraphs...
The only reason these workers still have benefits is because they're unionized and they've stuck to their guns about keeping benefits.
So you're saying that workers should have benefits, and you're saying that because YOU don't get those benefits, that you don't have sympathy for the workers who currently have what you say workers should have. I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're supportive of the workers or if you're just jealous of them.
And I'm supposed to care that he walked across a fucking bridge this morning?
Give me a bayonet!
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
You don't need sympathy. You need to organize.
"If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists."
--Joseph Ettor
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
earned income (over a lifetime, not your post college find my way years)
access to healthcare and social services
access to financial services
life expectancy
No matter how poor you are now, moms can always do your laundry and eventually you will all sell out and get the salary job. If you don't sell out, you will become a bitter armchair socialist like me. I'll take bets on that.
A friend of mine used to think he was working class because he had a job (this was UK in the early 90s)
You made some valid points about dead end office jobs, but this is because our generation is the first downwardly mobile generation since the 20s. Don't blame people who wear uniforms and work in tunnels for that. Blame yourself, blame your parents' generation. Blame it on the amount of cheap imported crap that surrounds you.
Most of what I'm reading is some sort of intuition based on indivual experiences dealing with the world after graduation. This is fine, but is not necessarily connected to reality.
i'm in the middle, that was kinda my point... it's a circular argument... if you're a kid and someone has 3 cookies and you have none, and they say, no one can go in the sandbox until i have 4 cookies, you're not going to have a lot of sympathy are you? especially after someone tells you've they've just closed down the bakery and no one's making more cookies... (b/c the days of the average person having a job with benefits ARE NOT coming back...)
that said, i'm not a child and these aren't cookies...
another point to toss out there: that it's hard to believe the MTA's word on anything, as they are most corrupt, keeping two sets of books, fair raising with a surplus govt. agency ever...
Take a trip with me in 1913,
To Calumet, Michigan, in the copper country.
I will take you to a place called Italian Hall,
Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball.
I will take you in a door and up a high stairs,
Singing and dancing is heard everywhere,
I will let you shake hands with the people you see,
And watch the kids dance around the big Christmas tree.
You ask about work and you ask about pay,
They'll tell you they make less than a dollar a day,
Working the copper claims, risking their lives,
So it's fun to spend Christmas with children and wives.
There's talking and laughing and songs in the air,
And the spirit of Christmas is there everywhere,
Before you know it you're friends with us all,
And you're dancing around and around in the hall.
Well a little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights,
To play the piano so you gotta keep quiet,
To hear all this fun you would not realize,
That the copper boss' thug men are milling outside.
The copper boss' thugs stuck their heads in the door,
One of them yelled and he screamed, "there's a fire,"
A lady she hollered, "there's no such a thing.
Keep on with your party, there's no such thing."
A few people rushed and it was only a few,
"It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you,"
A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down,
But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.
And then others followed, a hundred or more,
But most everybody remained on the floor,
The gun thugs they laughed at their murderous joke,
While the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.
Such a terrible sight I never did see,
We carried our children back up to their tree,
The scabs outside still laughed at their spree,
And the children that died there were seventy-three.
The piano played a slow funeral tune,
And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon,
The parents they cried and the miners they moaned,
"See what your greed for money has done."
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
Damn you're fast....funny how we picked the same picture...
Second off, the UNION made this strike happen, every WORKER that I've seen interviewed doesn't even know what they're striking for. I've heard "my pension. I want a better pension". When asked how it could be better, the guy blanks and just says, "better." Another handful of guys say, "the MTA had a surplus and waved it in our faces. We want some of that surplus." Motherfuckers turned down a 10.5% pay raise. I've never heard of such a high increase except on executive levels of big corporations.
Can I remind everyone here that the issue is not of benefits versus no benefits, it's about the TWU keeping benefits that are not given to ANYONE else, public or private. Does everyone on here have health insurance? Hope so. If you do, chances are you have a copay or deductible. Currently, transit workers have NEITHER. They have 100% 1st dollar insurance, no copay, no deductible. They are fighting to retire after 25 years of work. Most PRIVATE companies do not give this benefit. My father, who has been a teacher all his life, will not be able to retire until 65 if not 70. Yet someone who drives trains (or worse yet, sits in a token booth and gives directions to tourists) wants to be able to push off at 57 with a pension.
Fuck these motherfuckers. If you are in my shoes right now, you just spent the morning wading through traffic to buy christmas presents in brooklyn because you couldn't get into manhattan, you are losing money because you can't open your business, and you are looking at a loss in the biggest shopping week of the year because NOBODY is going to be walking around and stopping by when they can't even figure out how they'll get home at night.
Fuck these motherfuckers. Throw Toussaint in jail, fine or fire motherfuckers. You know who this hurts? Business owners, two-fare commuters, wage laborers, the old and the handicapped. I'm real glad a bunch of schmucks get to walk around in circles for an extra 10G while every single person I see or talk to on the street can't get their business, their family, or their shopping taken care of.
Fuck 'em. Fuck yall too. I'm fucking pissed.