Kathy Hochul & MTA brass better not buckle to LIRR – Latest News
Five Long Island Rail Road unions are threatening to screw New Yorkers with a crippling strike — probably as quickly as Thursday.
Their obscene calls for embrace 16% wage hikes over three years — 6.5 share factors more than different LIRR unions accepted — and no work-rule “givebacks,” which means no adjustments to guidelines written in some circumstances to cowl Nineteenth-century technology, not to mention adjusting for the twenty first century.
If the MTA doesn’t buckle, the unions might shut down the entire railroad.
Fewer than 3,500 railroad employees would blithely strand 350,000 commuters — out of pure greed.
That can be a main ache for these commuters and their employers; fill-in bus service might solely permit a small fraction to nonetheless take transit, and driving can be nightmarish.
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But Gov. Kathy Hochul and MTA brass better not cave to these extortionists, strike or not. Or riders and taxpayers will simply keep struggling, with ever-higher fares and ever-worse service.
That’s what occurred when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo buckled amid the unions’ threats 11 years in the past, leaving absurd work guidelines (and high pay) in place.
Union officers say they’re simply wanting to make sure that employees’ pay retains up with inflation and industry salaries elsewhere within the nation.
But, because the MTA notes, present contracts already mandate outrageous pay and work guidelines that drive prices by the roof, with New York taxpayers left on the hook.
LIRR engineers average $49.92 an hour, per MTA figures — 7% increased than the industry norm.
Yearly salaries average $160,000, although some make as a lot as $350,000, dwarfing average riders’ pay.
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And employees benefit from the best health and retirement advantages within the industry.
On high of all that, their contracts embrace insanely beneficiant — and expensive — work guidelines. To cite two:
Engineers get one additional day’s pay for operating a passenger prepare and one within the yard, then one other full-day bonus for working a diesel and an electric prepare in the identical day: three days’ pay for only one truly labored.
Managers can’t schedule employees for evening jobs until additionally they work during morning peak hours.
“We have to stand of up for the riders,” MTA boss Janno Lieber rightly fumed Tuesday. “A lot of folks [are] a little fed up hearing about these kind of abusive work rules that every other railroad in the United States seems to have gotten rid of, except for the Long Island Rail Road.”
And the company is definitely prepared to do additional pay raises in exchange for some sanity on work guidelines — however the unions gained’t hear of it.
They gained’t even agree to binding arbitration — a sure signal they know they’re being unreasonable.
No, they need all of it: Far increased hikes than most different public-sector unions (on the LIRR, MTA and elsewhere), plus no work-rule concessions in any respect.
Should the MTA give in (which it will have to, if Hochul so orders behind the scenes), the upshot can be disastrous — punching a $350 million gap in LIRR funds and (understandably) prompting different unions to demand: Us too!
In a phrase, utter chaos.
The unions might imagine Hochul, looking for reelection subsequent yr and so reluctant to upset Long Island voters, will really feel she should make give up because the unions maintain commuters hostage.
But to date the gov is displaying lots of backbone right here — and hooray for her.
In any sane world, Hochul would insist on work-rule fixes with none bump past the raises already supplied.
New Yorkers ought to back her in opposition to the unions’ bare greed and morally obscene hostage-taking.
Let ’em strike, then wait them out, gov: It’ll be a large long-term win for Long Island and the entire state.
