Blog: Conservatism

The Transport Workers Union Local 100, New York City's subway and bus union, called a strike today, crippling New York's transportation infrastructure. I think unions are generally very valuable; however, the TWU is making unreasonable demands and is fighting the inevitable and natural development of the economy.

In the past, unions filled a necessary role. Without them, workers had excessively dangerous conditions, long hours, a bad environment, no health care, and other market failures that inevitably arise when a small number of economic actors (the companies) with more access to information (other workers' salaries) negotiate with numerous individuals who have less information and less market power. These imbalances continue, such as in the service sector where employees still often are forced to work unpaid overtime (such as at Wal-Mart) and have no health care (such as at Wal-Mart).

But the TWU isn't fighting these problems. The TWU, instead, is representing a group of well paid public employees doing a job that is increasingly unnecessary as technology allows for greater automation, but fighting to preserve that job at very high wages.

Transport workers are paid almost as much as police officers and firemen, and more than teachers, yet the job requires less skill than all three. The TWU is asking for 8 percent raises every year, which is ridiculous. Private companies rarely give raises anymore, only salary adjustments upon promotion. Now it's true that a worker trained in driving a subway train can't easily jump to a competing company to get a better salary, but they aren't underpaid and are getting pay increases to keep up with inflation. The TWU also wants to keep a retirement age of 55 when hardly anyone in the private sector gets to retire at 55. 55 isn't as old as it used to be, and given longer lifespans, the low retirement age is forcing the city to pay pensions for a very long time.

For years, the MTA has been trying to reduce the number of token booth agents and conductors. Many activists want to keep these people for safety. And I definitely feel better having someone in the stations late at night. However, the station agents won't get out of their booth and intercede in the event of a problem, so closed circuit TV and a better police presence in stations or just in the surorunding neighborhoods would solve the problem much better. Conductors also may be able to help with evacuations in an emergency, but they won't intercede in any sort of violent confrontation on the train.

PATH gets along fine without agents in the stations, and WMATA and BART don't need two people running each train. As I wrote previously, I don't believe wage growth is going to continue at a high enough rate to sustain the kind of prosperity we expect. It already isn't doing so today. The only way we will continue to enjoy increases in the quality of life is for costs to come down. And automation of repetitive tasks, like selling subway tickets or driving subway trains, is one big area we can save on costs. Such automation has already yielded savings in manufacturing, shipping, and countless other sectors, which has made high qualities of life available to many people of much lower incomes than was ever possible before.

I sound like a conservative when I read the above paragraph. I differ from conservatives in that I don't blindly believe the market will take care of everything. The workers who no longer get jobs running subway trains could end up in fulfilling, creative, and financially rewarding pursuits, or they could end up in other, boring, even more repetitive, and much lower paying service jobs. Our public policy choices will determine which future we see. But hiring more generations of transit workers at high rates of pay to fill jobs no longer necessary is simply subsidizing the old economic models for a few at the expense of everyone else, and putting cities at a greater cost disadvantage relative to suburbs.