NYC Transit Workers Strike

A friend believes that union bosses, and it doesn't matter the union, are notoriously short-sighted. Their aims are measured in the years and not in the much bigger long-term picture.

Remember the conversation the Caddy Manager had with the caddies in the movie Caddie Shack?
"If you guys want to be replaced by golf carts, people, keep it up!" And his rant continued, "What this is, is poor caddying! Poor caddying!"

The union guys and those people, whose interests they purport to represent, don't seem aware of these two little recent developments: outsourcing and technology.

In the big picture, haggling over when retirement kicks in becomes irrelevent when there is no job to retire from. No job. No retirement. Hello?

If the good people of New York get angry enough, a proposal pointing to the success France (and the people love citing a French success) has had automating their train service will make its way to the Governor's desk if he doesn't come up with it himself.

Growing up in a union state, I could never understand why unions were so determined to shoot themselves in the foot. They had good jobs, but never seemed to understand the greater global market. Overreaching got their hands or whole arms lopped off more often than not. They ignored the bleeders and blundered on until all that was left was a very verbal, protesting bloody mass of flesh.

Underneath all this dispute is a concept I'll blog about soon: energy exchange.