Strike

Added 11/14/2008

As the reality of a strike nears, little by little the other riders at the stops I frequent are discussing plans for what will happen once there are no buses clogging the streets of the city and suburbs. The articles linked below talk about the intricacies of the issues of the labor and management impasse, and the more recent one outlines actions being taken to handle the increased vehicle traffic and the individual and corporate impact the strike will cause.

How will you get to work? (P-G)

Union says ‘work stoppage’ likely if Port Authority imposes contract (P-G)

No real updates on the strike, but the Post-Gazette had a great opinion piece 11/3. Basically, the piece said that the contract being imposed by the authority on the union is not bad, and would have been better had the union accepted the proposal of the fact finding commission. Coming from a long line of steel workers in my family and living in the shadows of the mills in my youth, I am very much in tune with the struggles between labor and management in this area. I’d love to see the current contract and especially anything else that grants insane privileges to the drivers and other union members. One such stipulation mentioned in the P-G piece was that they’d lose the clause that says they cannot be written up until they were late for work 13 times. Not a misprint, 13 times. If I am late for work 3 or 4 times, I would be happy with a reprimand versus being fired.

Yeah, I can see where they’d want to keep this and possibly other such nonsensical clauses in their contracts.

The full text of the P-G piece is available here. Let others know what you think.