(no subject)
Nov. 24th, 2004 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThe PA Turnpike workers are apparently on strike. At least, there are huge piles of them standing out in forty-degress-and-raining weather at the interchange in Breezewood, holding signs about how the PA Turnpike is unfair to its workers. I don't imagine they'd be doing that if they weren't striking, especially in this weather.
I've got some views on the PA Turnpike employees. First off, my uncle Jim works for the PA Turnpike as a toll taker guy. He makes more than forty thousand dollars a year (that's at least ten grand a year more than I make) with good health care and dental and stuff. He gets paid vacation days. He gets sick days. My uncle Jim stands in a little booth on a turnpike exit ramp and takes tickets and money and makes change. For this, he gets paid better than forty thousand dollars a year, with really top-notch benefits.
The offer that the union left on the table to go stand in the rain along Turnpike on-ramps today included annual pay increases of 40 cents per hour over the next three years, resulting in an average rate of $21 per hour after three years; a fully paid indemnity healthcare package from Highmark, with dental, vision and a generous prescription plan that carries a $6 co-pay per prescription; and 15 paid holidays and four weeks of paid vacation, on average. This is unfair? Hell, I wish someone would be unfair like that to me.
Now, I understand and support the rights of the workers to organize, to collectively petition for redress of things like unsafe working conditions, crooked pay schemes, stuff like company stores, and the right to a living wage. I think that some of the strides made by unions and their workers have produced a better, more fair situation for employees all over the country. I back the right of the Turnpike's toll-collectors to strike, 100%. However, in this particular case, I think that they're living in clueless-land.
The power of a strike is that it pits the cost of hiring replacement workers against the cost of acquiescing to the existing workers' demands. When the cost of meeting the demands of the union exceeds the cost of hiring nonunionized replacement workers, the strike should not succeed -- this keeps everyone honest and helps free market labor occur. It is my considered opinion that the PA Turnpike Commission would be well within its rights to replace all of these striking workers by hiring cheaper, nonunionized workers. I betcha that people would line the fuck up for no-college-degree-required 32-38K/year jobs with paid vacation and good health care. I *know* people who would line the fuck up for jobs like that.
In other news, I'b still god a caud. This fucking sucks.
I've got some views on the PA Turnpike employees. First off, my uncle Jim works for the PA Turnpike as a toll taker guy. He makes more than forty thousand dollars a year (that's at least ten grand a year more than I make) with good health care and dental and stuff. He gets paid vacation days. He gets sick days. My uncle Jim stands in a little booth on a turnpike exit ramp and takes tickets and money and makes change. For this, he gets paid better than forty thousand dollars a year, with really top-notch benefits.
The offer that the union left on the table to go stand in the rain along Turnpike on-ramps today included annual pay increases of 40 cents per hour over the next three years, resulting in an average rate of $21 per hour after three years; a fully paid indemnity healthcare package from Highmark, with dental, vision and a generous prescription plan that carries a $6 co-pay per prescription; and 15 paid holidays and four weeks of paid vacation, on average. This is unfair? Hell, I wish someone would be unfair like that to me.
Now, I understand and support the rights of the workers to organize, to collectively petition for redress of things like unsafe working conditions, crooked pay schemes, stuff like company stores, and the right to a living wage. I think that some of the strides made by unions and their workers have produced a better, more fair situation for employees all over the country. I back the right of the Turnpike's toll-collectors to strike, 100%. However, in this particular case, I think that they're living in clueless-land.
The power of a strike is that it pits the cost of hiring replacement workers against the cost of acquiescing to the existing workers' demands. When the cost of meeting the demands of the union exceeds the cost of hiring nonunionized replacement workers, the strike should not succeed -- this keeps everyone honest and helps free market labor occur. It is my considered opinion that the PA Turnpike Commission would be well within its rights to replace all of these striking workers by hiring cheaper, nonunionized workers. I betcha that people would line the fuck up for no-college-degree-required 32-38K/year jobs with paid vacation and good health care. I *know* people who would line the fuck up for jobs like that.
In other news, I'b still god a caud. This fucking sucks.
