Strike Advance

According to the press conference being held now by the mediator, if I understand it correctly, the union leadership in the NYC transit strike will recommend a return to work for later today. This doesn’t guarantee an end to the strike, but the affirmative recommendation from leadership makes it likely. Hopefully there will be a fair deal, and Mayor Rich will stop his disgraceful rhetoric.

One more point I think should be made. One of the key conservative talking points about this strike is that it hurts working people the most. This is, of course, correct. A transit strike does indeed hurt poor people the most (although in NYC the pain is far more broadly felt than in any other American city; I work in a middle-class profession, and not a single one of my colleagues commutes by car.) But it’s also neither here not there; to blame the union for these effects is just begging the question. The predictable effects of the strike are the responsibility of those who are responsible for the strike, and given their last-minute sabotage of the negotiations I believe the bulk of the responsibility of the MTA. Moreover, the class effects of a transit strike are true of pretty much every strike; if you can only strike in contexts where there are completely neutral effects, strikes will be rare indeed. If grocery workers go on strike, wealthy people can better afford to order groceries by delivery, to eat out, to drive to the Whole Foods that isn’t on strike. etc. etc. etc. Having money makes life more convenient; it’s pretty straightforward. But the class effects of a strike are not an argument against a strike unless you’re opposed to it in the first place.

…Greenhouse has the story.

…this is a great point by Atrios:

There’s a really weird class resentment going on. White collar workers “know” they deserve more money than blue collar workers. Some blue collar workers, ones in unions and skilled workers, can make decent money. Since a lot of white collar workers actually don’t get paid very well, they resent the hell out of the fact that some uneducated lout gets to buy a nicer house than they do. And, thus, we get the out of touch media coverage of the NYC transit strike.

Yep. And in addition, a lot of people seem to ignore the fact that there are other important things about a job aside from the pay. It’s true that many journalists (and academics) don’t get paid exceptionally well. But it’s also true that these jobs are considerably more pleasant than, say, picking dead rats off of subway tracks. People in physically demanding blue collar jobs should be paid well. When you have a job that you actually enjoy doing, that’s both a rare privelege and a significant utility beyond your salary. Quit sneering at blue collar workers who have the middle class incomes they deserve.