The New York Sun had a good article yesterday on the New York transit strike. The union is blatantly disobeying the law in striking and not winning any fans as people have to trek miles in very cold weather to get to work. But the MTA isn't made up of angels and seems to be a great sources of mismanagement, patronage, and corruption. I still think that they have to start firing striking workers. As the Sun says,

If the MTA moves even a scintilla toward the union's negotiating position as the result of this strike, it would reward the union's illegal behavior and send to the dozens of other unions who do business with the state, the city, and the public authorities a message of appeasement — that if you want a better contract, go on strike, even if it is against the law. That may be how things work in Latin America or Paris, or how they used to work in the New York of the 1960s and 1970s, but it is not a way to run a successful city in the competitive global economy. It's a recipe for making New York's state and local tax burden, already among the nation's heaviest, even worse. The right move for the MTA now — the only move, if it is going to avoid a strike every time a contract is up for renegotiation — is to take an extremely hard line with the Transport Workers Union Local 100. As a first step, the MTA could refuse to negotiate with this union until the workers are back on the job. If that fails, the authority can begin hiring and training permanent replacement workers. The strikers mustn't be permitted to escape the full penalties of the Taylor Law, which include docking workers' pay and jailing the union leaders.

Can you imagine what all the other unions that do business with the city government will want if the transport workers union gets away with this. But, the Sun also has some recommendations on how to clean up the MTA.

There are already some stories about workers crossing the picket line. I wonder how many would be willing to be fired if they don't get their demands to be able to retire at age 55 with a full pension. I wonder if the people trudging to work in the cold or the small business owners losing business the week before Christmas have much sympathy for these workers' demands when they get a look at what the workers are already getting.

The MTA offered the union a three-year contract with raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent through 2008, Kelly said. The transit agency also agreed to retain the union's full pension eligibility age at 55, on condition new hires contribute 6 percent of their annual earnings for 10 years to help finance future pensions, he said.

The state agency also gave workers Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday.

Subway operators earned an average of $62,438 a year, including overtime, under the previous three-year contract, the MTA said. Train conductors averaged $53,000, subway booth clerks $50,720, and bus drivers $62,551, the state agency said. The MTA wasn't able to provide the average amount of overtime.

Sure, it's expensive to live in NYC, but in which jobs do workers not contribute to their own pension funds? The real question should be why such contracts were ever negotiated.

I say, fire those workers, who aren't even supported by their national union, and hire people who are still out of work from Katrina. I'm sure a lot of those people would be happy to get such a job for driving a bus all day. Or, just allow, as the WSJ editors argue today, some competition from private people who want to drive their own form of transportation. Allow the jitney drivers, who have been banned because of pressure from the unions, to make a living driving people where they want to go for a cheaper price than the cabbies charge.