Blog: New York

If James had never split the colony, would the New York subway cross the Hudson to destinations in New Jersey? Would the L train reach Hoboken? Or perhaps the 7 train would run to Secaucus, as this site advocates (map) in a cute but unrealistic plan?

It would certainly be useful to have a subway to the Meadowlands, though. Now if only the Yankees could move there instead of destroying the Bronx's parks.

Between 10 am and 4 pm trains run Hoboken-33rd every 10 minutes (6 trains per hour), every 12 minutes Hoboken-WTC (5 TPH), and every 10 minutes Journal Sq-33rd (6 TPH), and these trains are practically empty (approximately 10 people per car, and that's for the more popular cars near the stairs).

If you reduced Hoboken-33 and JSQ-33 to 5 TPH as well, you'd save 12 trains. Let's say that it costs twice as much to run a train in the middle of the night due to paying people more (I doubt it's twice). With the cost savings you could run trains every 15 minutes instead of every 30 between 11:42 (the current last train before the 30-minute gaps) until 2:42, or trains every 10 minutes from 11:42 to 1:12, or extend the daytime service pattern (4 lines instead of 2). Or extend service a little less on weeknights but also extend it on weekends. Any of these alternatives would serve many, many more people than the current brain-dead sardine-can night service today.

I'm all in favor of workers being valued. I also worry about blind knee-jerk reactions on either side, whether blaming unions for all the problems in labor relations, or insisting on unquestioning support for any strike no matter how justified.

Everyone should be able to agree, though, that the union clearly blew it. Whether justified or unjustified, they did a terrible job selling the strike to the public, and public perception is what mattered most.

The press constantly called it an "illegal" strike. They reported that the union was asking for a 27 percent raise, or 8 percent a year for 3 years (the math doesn't quite add up, but it's close). They reported that the union was asking for a retirement age of 50. The union says these demands were just bargaining stances, necessary to counterbalance equally outrageous demands from the MTA, but it doesn't matter. They got reported, without adequate context, and the union did a poor job countering the misinformation. New Yorkers saw the numbers, raises and retirement ages far, far better than they themselves enjoy, and saw the union as greedy.

The strike wasn't about the raises or the retirement age - before the strike, they had already resolved those points. But what was the strike about? Few people knew. Even union members didn't know. One AP photo showed a worker picketing with a sign reading "Rider & Worker Safety First." But the strike wasn't about safety. One union member interviewed on television, asked why he was striking, started talking about Iraq and teachers. But the strike wasn't about those things either.

Striking is indeed the only real weapon unions have. But it's quite a blunt instrument. That's why it is vital to choose targets carefully. The Daily News reported that the union had prepared for the strike by securing a $5 million loan, setting up a command center outside union headquarters, and naming alternate officers in case the real officers were in jail or otherwise unavailable. They had prepared their own operation for a strike, but hadn't developed a clear message, or prepared the press or public. One can't help feeling that they were eager to strike - maybe too eager. Maybe that's not true, but they failed to dispel that impression. If they had spent months hammering away at a single message, they could have ensured the press reported their true grievances and the public knew it, whatever it was.

Through a combination of factors, winning many of the most important battles, a globalizing economy, an apathetic public, technological and economic change, and unfriendly labor laws, most unions are dying. And calling a strike, one that severely inconveniences millions without laying adequate groundwork in message and PR, is not only bad for the TWU, it's bad for every other effort to organize and improve the lives of workers.

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.