Another strike in NYC

I'm travelling and so am a little bit out of it this week, but damn, that transit strike in New York is a big deal. I can't say that I'm familiar enough with the issues to know the details of the offers from workers and management, but what jumps out at me is the fact that the state of New York has tried to legislate away the transit workers' right to strike. Yesterday, a judge ruled the strike illegal, and imposed fines on the union amounting to $1 million per day.

Pretty steep.

Obviously, I'm a labor partisan, but it seems to me that when you take away a union's right to strike, you take away most of the bargaining power of its members. It's the air traffic controllers all over again.

We'll see how it goes. I don't hold out much hope. Not, at least, after this:

And yesterday, merely hours into the paralyzing job action, Michael T. O'Brien, the international president of the parent union, the Transport Workers Union of America, urged the city's transit workers to abandon the strike and return to work immediately. He said the parent union would provide no money or other assistance to Local 100. |link|

The same report says that Transport Workers Local 100 started the strike with $3.6 million in its coffers. That won't go very far at a million a day.