All day I've been watching people retweet this
whining article from Ronnie Polaneczky in the Daily News. This editorial, is, unfortunately, garbage. She uses appeal to emotion and straw man arguments to get everyone riled up, while offering absolutely no new insight that hasn't been present in every man on the street interview the networks have done in their 5 p.m. newscasts since Tuesday.
One of my biggest issues is with this particular comment:
...it's a thumbed-nose to something for which most folks reading this paper would give their back molars: The promise of a paycheck for the next 60 months.
...
So let me get this straight: Unemployment is rampant in this region, and your union actually chose to strike rather than continue hammering out the details of your already excellent jobs? We've lost dozens of staffers in recent years, and the paper's possible demise is a topic of endless speculation
Hell, it's a promise I wish we had right here at the Daily News.
We've lost dozens of staffers in recent years, and the paper's possible demise is a topic of endless speculation.
Being someone who went through a combined communications program right next to the journalism majors, I can tell you that it's no major secret that any media job is not going to have job security. You go into the program knowing that you're in a business where people will routinely work
for free because "it's a good resume builder". When people are willing to do things like that, is it any wonder there's no job security?
Second, the argument of "these people should be happy to have a job, other people don't have jobs". I heard this endlessly. For the last year, any time I voiced the tiniest complaint about work to someone, the immediate response was "well, at least you HAVE a job".
Unfortunately, this is a straw man argument, just like when your mother told you to eat your vegetables because children in Africa were starving. The fact people are losing their jobs does not mean that people who have a job should just take whatever shit is served to them. Your plight is not SEPTA's problem, and I'm curious what train you're riding that goes from "I lost my job" to "SEPTA workers should keep working without a contract."
Ronnie 's editorial is nothing that hasn't been repeated ad-nauseum at this point, and it demonstrates the same misunderstanding of the situation shown by the commuters on the platforms.
TWU Local 234 is a closed shop. You can't work for SEPTA city transit and not be in the union. I can guarantee you that many of these men do not want to be on strike. They have families to feed, just like you. I'm sure anyone who works the night shift would much rather be driving a heated bus up Walnut Street than standing around a burning garbage can holding picket signs. Unfortunately, when union leadership says strike, they must strike, lest they be labelled scabs. And remember, as long as these men and women are standing on the picket line, they're not bringing home a paycheck. The Media Mobilizing Project has a
great video of the strike from the perspective of the workers.
This isn't about now. This is about what's to come. The wages aren't the issue. The pension is the issue. Willie Brown made these points in his press conference. SEPTA funds the TWU Local 234 pension at 54%, and wants members to increase their contributions. Meanwhile, SEPTA management gets their pension funded nearly 90%. SEPTA is seeing a huge surge in funding and stimulus grants, and I don't think it's unreasonable that some of that capital should be used to help fix the mismanaged pension system.
This is a five year deal being negotiated. That means that no matter how well the currently-upswinging economy does, no matter how well SEPTA does, whatever is agreed upon in this contract is locked in until 2014. Therefore, it behoves union leaders to get the best deal they can.
Yes, they were very shitty in the way they went about things walking out at 3 a.m. Yes, the city was mislead by both the press and by Mayor Nutter proudly announcing a strike had been averted before the World Series. But don't act like you didn't see this coming. The union was without a contract for 8 months, strikes were threatened, and SEPTA management failed to act. SEPTA didn't make good on their promise to negotiate a contract, so TWU made good on theirs to strike.
Everyone is inconvenienced by this strike, including the workers walking the picket lines. They're sitting in the same long lines of cars that you are on 76 and 676. We all want them to get back to work as quick as possible. But organizing
protests against strikers and writing angry ranting editorials that ignore the facts and fuel emotion are not going to help anyone.
Colin
