Happy New Year From The Union

Ah, the weather outside is frightful--let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. And let it collect so that emergency vehicles can't get to their calls and other workers can't get to their jobs. That was the position of the New York City Sanitation Workers Union after Auntie Bloomberg proposed budget restraints on the union employees and some necessary layoffs. He hadn't even gotten to the bloated pensions yet.

The left and the unions are always prattling on about how they care about the "little people" but when it comes to having to tighten their own expansive belts, that's another story entirely. Bloomberg said "we have to start saving money." The union replied "let them eat snow." Rather than do their jobs and protect the citizens of New York whose taxpayers pay for their outrageous salaries, benefits and deadwood employees, they decided to "make the mayor pay." In the process, at least two human beings also paid--with their lives. A newborn baby and an elderly woman died when the EMTs couldn't get to them through the uncleared snowdrifts.

But what are a couple of lives compared to the horror of layoffs, reduction in pay scale for "supervisors," and reduction in the size of the oversized workforce? Several union members with consciences (there are a few) reported to City Countilman Dan Halloran that: "They were told to take off routes and not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay." There were also "blue flu" call-outs, so named for police union slowdowns in the past.

The Sanitation Workers Union has the exclusive bargaining rights for all sanitation workers who are members of the union whether they want to be or not. Now imagine just how much worse it could have been if the big labor "Police-Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill" had passed. Then the EMTs would have been ordered not even to try to get to the emergency calls. The big union bosses have not given up on their monopoly bargaining bill, and will keep trying until somebody caves. That will be much harder with the new Republican House, but union bosses are determined to get control of all public employees in order to hold the big cities hostage to unsustainable workforces, pay scales that are twice that of the private sector for comparable jobs, and retirement benefits that make the Europeans look like Ebenezer Scrooge.

We need to apply a new adage echoing an old one: "The price of public safety is eternal vigilance." The unions have billions of dollars in union dues extorted from unwilling members to throw at Congress critters to vote for the monopoly bill. The recent gala for freshmen Republican Congressmen indicates at least a few can be bought. In the words of the great American President who broke the police strikes, Calvin Coolidge, "nobody has the right to strike against the public good." Unfortunately, since that time, Congress and the muddle-headed Supreme Court have declared "nobody--except a union--has the right to strike against the public good."