MTA Strike in New York City

First, I should impart some full disclosure. I am very anti-union. It is not that I am against the concept of collective bargaining. I do believe that workers should band together to protect their collective interests. However, I do not believe that those collective negotiations should include pay scales, retirement and medical benefits.

I am a big believer in merit. People should be rewarded in work, as in life, for working hard and being successful. However, unions have become something that spits on merit. Unions bargain for pay according to length of service, education, etc. These scales have nothing to do with how successful someone is in performing their tasks.

Secondly, unions have bargained to the ultimate detriment of their members in a globalizing economy. The unions, in addition to poor management in highly unionized indsutries, have served to create jobs which significantly overpay its employees. While it may be hard to say this with a straight face if I were some CEO making millions, it is true. Auto workers in Detroit have the opinion that a $60,000 per year job assembling autos, with more than $40,000 per year in retirement and medical benefits is middle class. I'm sorry folks, $60k per year in salary is not middle class. That is likely in the top 20% of incomes in the country.

So as it applies to the recent transportation strike in New York City, Americans, and even New Yorkers, are losing their sympathies for workers, who are overpaid for the value that they provide. I was sincerely hoping that Mayor Bloomberg would make more drastic threats to the union, such as firing the whole bunch.

Strikes such as those, or the recent teachers strike here in Oregon, in which a rural district outside of Portland saw teachers striking (and consequently students not in class) for 4 weeks, are simply causing the unions to distance themselves from the people and causing general animosity. Frankly, while this may certainly be painful in the short run, it will likely destroy the unions as we know them today. Perhaps that will be a good thing.