By Henry J. Stern
December 23, 2005

The three-day transit strike, now mercifully ended, was an expensive exercise in machismo.  It cost the city economy hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages, sales and other economic activity.  The loss has been estimated at a billion dollars, but who really knows?  It cost the Transit Workers Union $3 million in fines, unless they are able to weasel out of their punishment, which is already relatively modest considering the economic damage they caused innocent people and businesses by their illegal acts.
 
It will cost the workers about a thousand dollars each, at the rate of two days pay for each day on strike.  In this case, their high wages serve to increase the penalty for striking.  However, they will more than make it back in the first year of the contract.  Whether they would have received the same increase without going on strike remains to be seen.
 
It must in fairness be said that the MTA is no better than the union, and they have less of an excuse for incompetence because the senior staff is highly paid and the trustees are largely appointees of the governor, although some are recommended by the mayor and by county executives.  The weakness begins at the top, since the chairman is a crony of the man who, almost single-handedly, created Governor Pataki.  There are no shining lights on that board, and knowledge of transportation is a scarce commodity among the appointees.  Our over-the-top recommendation is to bring back David Gunn, recently fired by politicians at Amtrak, as executive director, promote Kathy Lapp to chair the board, and to make Mr. Kalikow the chair emeritus, since he has worked long hours without pay for many years doing what he thought was right.
 
In case you wonder why we have low regard for the MTA, look at 2 Broadway, which they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars renovating but do not even own.  Using the building was a mistake in the first place, since it was a Class A office building at Bowling Green Park, overlooking New York harbor.  It is an extravagant waste of tax funds to put thousands of government employees in very expensive real estate.  The MTA staff can as easily work in or near the other relatively new MTA office building at 130 Livingston Street, in Brooklyn, which is across Boerum Place from 110 Livingston Street, the old Board of Education headquarters which became a symbol for bureaucracy and waste.  110 was sold by the city, and is now being converted into taxpaying condos.
 
The MTA's failure to acquire title to 2 Broadway means that the owner of the property, one Tamir Sapir, a Russian immigrant who once drove a cab in New York City and now owns a billion-dollar real estate empire and a home in Trump Tower.  Mr. Sapir would make a better chairman for the MTA than the bureaucrats whom he hornswoggled.  On top of that, the construction job was taken over by the mob and various unions, who paid off MTA employees, some of whom have since gone to jail for brief terms.  To be fair to Mr. Kalikow, this horror was initiated before he became Chairman, but since his fortune is based on his father's success as a real estate developer, he might have used whatever gifts he inherited to clean up the mess.  Mr. Kalikow was also, briefly, publisher of the New York Post, and played a commendable role in keeping that newspaper going until Rupert Murdoch relieved him of making up its deficits.
 
This is not the time and place to disparage the union, we gave our opinion on that Wednesday, in a New York Sun article, Held Hostage, published Wednesday, day 2 of what the mayor kept calling "the illegal, selfish strike".  On Tuesday and Wednesday, the mayor walked across the bridge, in very cold weather and without a hat, which he should have worn because so much of the heat of the body is lost through the head.  Because he did not dally to chat up enough people, he was the victim of a somewhat catty article in the Times, which did its usual fine job reporting all aspects of the strike, as did the News, Post, Newsday and the Sun.  The press does really well with these big stories, perhaps following the playbook of quondam Timesman Howell Raines, to whom is attributed the order, "Flood the zone."
 
We have to find a better way to prevent these ruinous strikes.  A union which could sell its West Side headquarters for 80 million dollars (it's location is 80 West End Avenue) can pay a million dollars a day for as long as it took Phileas Fogg to circumnavigate the globe.  The Transit Workers Union could rationally be held liable for the economic damage caused by the illegal strike, just as corporations are now routinely forced to pay for the consequences of  the illegal (and sometimes even legal) pollution that they cause.  If the house of labor were auctioned off to pay those who could prove strike-related damages, the victims would still receive a modest percentage of their losses.  BTW, individuals who paid extra money to get to work, or who lost wages because they were unable to come in, also deserve compensation, perhaps at a higher rate.  Leave it to the courts.
 
Being a just, merciful and liberal, we do NOT recommend such action.  Just issue a warning that it will happen the next time they take a strike vote.  In fact, the strike vote could be enjoined because it contemplates an illegal act, like the purchase of an accelerant in order to commit arson.  The MTA hierarchy is no better than the TWU's leadership, but as a public agency it should be held to a higher standard.  It is facile to say that the MTA and the TWU deserve each other, much like the cobra and the mongoose.  But the City of New York and its people deserve more from both of them.
 
A suggestion we made in an op-ed piece in Tuesday's Times was that the city take greater responsibilities for local transit.  Congressman Anthony Weiner e-mailed to say he had made a similar suggestion in his 2005 campaign for mayor.  He sent us the document and, although there are questions of liability and practicality involved in breaking up the MTA, we both agree that the city should have a greater voice in mass transit.  We should note that Comptroller Bill Thompson was the only Democrat who we heard say that the union should go back to work, although both he and Weiner have supported the union at TWU rallies, as they do for other unions, the Democrats being the party of the working people
 
What would these solons do if they had any authority to make decisions in these matters, other than rely on their skills at exhortation?  What would any of the other prospective candidates do?  Tell us. These are questions that Democrats have not had to face for a dozen years, and presumably will not confront for at least another four.
 
Enjoy the holidays, Christmas, Hannukah (however it is spelled), Kwanzaa, New Year's Day, the Feast of the Three Kings, any others you may observe for which parking rules are suspended.


#273 12.23.05 1216wds