But I've got to say the Transport Workers Union has done nothing at all to build public support for what would almost certainly be a massively unpopular strike. I was in NYC for the 1980 strike, and it was absolute hell. And to a public used to cutbacks and DIY pension schemes, the TA's proposal to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62 doesn't sound unreasonable. (Of course, I don't agree, but I'm not the general public.) The union, and not management, would be blamed for forcing people to spend 2 hours walking to work and for the massive traffic jams. The union is widely seen as having lost the 1980 strike, and the political situation of labor is certainly no better today.
The TWU could have done something with the Transit Authority's plan to eliminate conductors and token-booth clerks, playing on public fears of crime & terrorism. (The TA is buying new automated trains that can be completely controlled by the driver, eliminating the need for a conductor to open & close doors. And with tokens gone, replaced by a computerized MetroCard system, there's much less need for clerks to be in every station; token clerks have been replaced by customer service people, but they're much fewer in number, and more & more stations will be unstaffed in the future.) But they haven't done any agitprop. No leafleting, no ads. Their website <http://twulocal100.org> features mainly reprints of newspaper articles. And given New York State's Taylor Law, which imposes enormous fines on public workers (two days of pay for every day of the strike) and unions for striking ($1.5 million in 1980), labor could get seriously screwed by a strike.
Doug
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Any second thoughts, cosidering that, in spite of the TWU's failure to build public support: 1) They did succeed in beating back the MTA's attempt to raise the retirement age to 62 and introduce a two-tier benefit structure, 2) public opinion in the city, though by no means universally sympathetic, was far from universally hostile to the strikers, either, and that the hysterical anti-union campaign by Bloomberg/Pataki/The Post and Daily News didn't quite catch on, and in fact overreached? Was something maybe gained by the strike?
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