And Your Point Was What?

If in the end transit workers somehow get a worse deal than when they started, what exactly was the point? Now it emerges:

“In 21 years as a transit worker, this has probably been one of the best days of my life,” said Dennis H. Boyd, a train operator and member of the union’s executive board, who voted to end the strike. “The membership wanted to make a statement, they wanted to go to battle with the M.T.A., and we fulfilled that.”

Oh, so it wasn’t about refusing to sell out the “unborn” after all! In the end, it was about . . . respect. Some members of the rank-and-file were even more explicit:

Frank, a six-year vet who also works in a substation, says the strike had to happen because too many strike threats have gone nowhere in the past; the TWU needed to slap the city to remind folks that they’ve got some juice.

Oh, not to worry, all you all made your point. We certainly respect the fact that you can fuck over all of us in the respectful way you did. Sorry for ever doubting that you had it bad.

Indeed, everyone respects the financial and psychological damage you can incur:

The financial hammerlock of the three-day transit strike may have cost New York a whopping $1 billion, the city controller’s office said yesterday. Waiters missed out on the gravy train of holiday tips, retailers slashed prices in deserted stores and office workers lost productivity to the elaborate planning of normally uneventful commutes.

Everyone from mighty national chains to mom-and-pop stores to the transit workers themselves felt the pain.

“This strike killed the little guy,” said Mark Isreal, who owns the Doughnut Plant on the lower East Side. “I lost half my wholesale business — about $1,200 a day — because my driver was stuck in traffic.”

Isreal said the Dean & DeLuca cafe at Rockefeller Center turned away a big Doughnut Plant delivery because it was two hours late and had missed the breakfast rush.

. . .

Anastasia Donde, 22, a waitress at SoHo’s Cub Room, complained that she had made only $15 in tips Tuesday night. “Normally, I would make $100,” she said. “Christmas is an important time for my business. This is bad.”

. . .

As for the striking transit workers, the walkout cost them about $400 a day in lost wages and fines. Spread across 33,700 strikers and three days, that’s more than $40 million.