On The Subject Of “Inconveniences”

Yesterday, during Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint’s press conference in which he likened his struggle to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, he attempted to apologize to those affected by the strike:

“To all New Yorkers, I’d like to apologize for the inconvenience and beg our riders and all working people for their patience and forbearance for the inconvenience caused by our strike. There is a higher calling than the law and that’s justice and equality. Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would still be in the back of the bus.”

Let’s just get one thing straight here — an “inconvenience” is when the bus is ten minutes late. I think most would agree that this whole shutting down the entire transit system thing seems to go a little beyond mere “inconvenience.” But it also raises a bigger question: What would happen if he really wanted to put us out?

Look, The Race Card!

TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, invoking the memory of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks:

In an impassioned news conference, Mr. Toussaint invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as he sought to rally his troops, and New Yorkers, in effect portraying the strike as a civil rights campaign to help a work force that is largely black and Hispanic.

Standing With The Working Man By Fucking Over The Working Man

The Times, stating the obvious:

The burden of the strike fell unevenly upon New Yorkers of different classes.

For many living in Manhattan, the strike remained an inconvenience, not a hardship. Some, like Dave Halman, a 35-year-old Wall Street banker, worked from home the first day. On Wednesday, he was out on West 96th Street waiting for a company shuttle. “It’s fine,” he said. “We went through the blackout, 9/11 and now most people are taking this in stride.”

But for many more, the impact was harsher. Stan Decker said he had walked nearly seven miles from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to Jamaica, Queens. “They’re hurting the ordinary people, they’re not hurting the big shots,” Mr. Decker, 59, said of the union. A union member himself, he complained, “Everybody’s paying for health insurance. Why should they be different? When they overdo it like this, they hurt unions because if gives people a bad impression.

Why Not Just Fire Them?

I’m just thinking what the Post is apparently saying by reprinting President Reagan’s 48-hour ultimatum on today’s op-ed page:

On Aug. 3, 1981, nearly 13,000 air-traffic controllers defied President Ronald Reagan’s warnings and federal law by going on strike. Nearly half of the nation’s flights were grounded. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Reagan issued a 48-hour ultimatum.

REAGAN: This morning at 7 a.m., the union representing those who man America’s air-traffic control facilities called a strike. . . .

Let me make one thing plain. I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike. Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I’m maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL-CIO union. But we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government’s reason for being.

. . .

It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.

Q: Do you think that they should go to jail, Mr. President, anybody who violates this law?

Reagan: I told you what I think should be done. They’re terminated.

Two days later, the president fired the 11,359 air-traffic controllers who had not returned to work.

But as the Daily News notes, firing them all is more difficult than you would have thought:

It has become an angry refrain as New Yorkers walk, bike and hitch their way through the cold with the striking MTA workers in mind: “Why don’t they just fire them all?”

According to the Taylor Law, which outlaws strikes, a striking worker can in fact lose his job.

But that doesn’t make mass firings practical, according to Jerome Lefkowitz, an architect of the law.

Everyone fired for striking could ask for an individual hearing on his or her dismissal: “It would be a very complicated and expensive process,” Lefkowitz said.

There’s also the obvious problem of quickly finding, training and dispatching people to replace the 33,700 strikers.

Haste in replacing striking workers has contributed to tragedy in the past: A 1918 transit strike, during which a dispatcher was sent to fill in for a motorman, ended in the horrific Malbone St. wreck, which killed nearly 100 people in Brooklyn.

I’m Still Freezing My Balls Off

Things I don’t want to hear right now include “New Yorkers are a tough bunch,” “It takes a lot to rattle New Yorkers” or, god help us, “It’s a New York moment”:

Not every New Yorker was dismayed by the developments.

Grinning from ear to ear, 67-year-old Charlotte Karcher marched across the Brooklyn Bridge from her home in Brooklyn Heights to her gym in lower Manhattan — then back again.

She said she was buoyed by hardy fellow New Yorkers.

“It’s a New York moment,” she said.

Not for long.