toll-collectors' strike

[cellio]

An open letter to Governor Rendell:

As you know, the Teamsters union organized a strike of the Turnpike toll collectors and maintenance crews to begin on the busiest travel day of the year. The state was forced to let travellers use the road for free on Wednesday, and has been collecting reduced tolls since then.

While many drivers are happy with this turn of events, as a taxpayer I am outraged. In most lines of work, sabotage that costs an employer money would be punished. I have heard nothing of reimbursement from the Teamsters, nor do I expect to.

I read in today's newspaper that the state has hired temporary workers to begin collecting the regular tolls, and that when the strike ends these workers will be laid off. I have a better idea: hire them permanently and fire the strikers. Quickly.

The striking workers are not being taken advantage of, as should be clear from the ease with which you hired their replacements. They make an average of $18.50 per hour, not counting overtime, which is a lot more than other cashiers make. (80% of those on strike make more than $50,000 per year.) Each year they also receive 15 paid holidays and four weeks' vacation. The deal they rejected included fully-paid health care, protection from layoffs for three years, and annual raises.

Their greed is ridiculous, and I urge you to fire these spoiled brats and replace them with people who want to work for the more-than-fair compensation the state has offered. Please restore the Turnpike to normal business as quickly as possible, before even more of our tax dollars have to be diverted to paying for this loss.

Thank you.

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I haven't actually sent it yet, so feedback is very welcome. What's the correct way to address the governor, anyway? I don't think it's Dear Governor".

"Open letter" means I'll be sending copies to the newspaper and my representatives, not just whining here. :-)

Update: I may be making some unwarranted assumptions about the terms of their employment; need to check.

Comments

[siderea]

So... you're a Libertarian, right? So why do you have a problem with this? The labor-market model of this is that some vendors (the workers) set a price on a service (labor), the buyer (the state) didn't want to pay that price (wages), so the vendors refused to provide the service. How is this any different from your cell phone company cutting you off if you decide their fee is too high and don't want to pay it any more or renew your contract with them?

Sabotage is destruction of facilities (from the French "sabot", a wooden shoe, with which the destruction was historically done). These fellows have simply refused to work, since the state wouldn't contract for that labor. After all, their bodies and hours are their property, and I thought Libertarians considered the disposition of one's private property to be nigh-sacred.

What we have here is reciprocal monopolies: one party owns all the tolltaker jobs and one party own all the tolltaker workers. Frankly, it looks like a fair fight to me.

Why do you think it "greedy" for them to make >$50k? Or for that matter, any amount of money or service at all? Do you think it's unreasonable for entities to charge the maximum they can to make the greatest possible margin? Isn't that just capitalism?

According to Fanny Mae guidelines, our hypothetical $50k/annum toll taker can afford (at current fixed mortgage rates for a 30yr mortgage) a ~$230k home if he's got a $10k down payment. According to this the average price of a single-family, four-bedroom, 2-½-bath, 2,200-square-foot dwelling with two-car garage in Pittsburgh was $250k in 2002[*]. That's a bit beyond his reach, but it looks plausible that putting in an honest day's labor as a tolltaker will allow him to house himself, a stay-at-home wife and two kids, while slowly building equity in the house. Not palacial living, but a three-bedroom ranch house with a back yard in a good neighborhood with good schools.

Is that an unreasonable thing to expect from a job? Is there some intrinsic reason that people working as tolltakers shouldn't earn enough to do that?

In any event, you seem to think that it will be trivial to replace those workers for as much or less money per hour; I think you are mistaken in that. Staffing third shift is hard under the best of circumstances; staffing third shift in semi-outdoor positions harder still. Finding trustworthy employees to handle money unsupervised is hard, too, (as countless transit systems have discovered), and combining that with the above... No, I don't think $50k a year+ benes is at all unreasonable.

[cellio]

Oh, I completely agree that workers have a right to set minimum prices below which they won't work. The flip side of that is that employers have the corresponding right to not employ people they deem overpriced. The way this usually works out absent unions is that you agree on a mutually-binding notification period before terminating employment (absent cause, of course); you don't just walk out, or walk the person out of the building sans severance package. With unions, the workers walk out and the unions try to prevent the employer from replacing them -- physically and/or through the courts. Fortunately, there has been no appreciable violence on the picket lines thus far in this strike. I don't know what the court challenges look like.

If the striking workers said "we quit if you don't meet our demands", that'd be perfectly within their rights. If, however, they do anything to prevent the state from replacing them, or if they violated any agreements about timing (probably not but I don't know), that's not. So maybe I don't have enough information; thanks for bringing this up.

I also don't think it's unreasonable for a toll collector to make $50k if he can negotiate for it. (It seems odd to me that we pay toll collectors better than nurses and teachers. Hmm.) But I'm surprised if the market supports that given the number of people working McJobs for minimum wage -- why aren't they beating down the doors to triple their salaries and get health insurance besides?

According to this the average price of a single-family, four-bedroom, 2-½-bath, 2,200-square-foot dwelling with two-car garage in Pittsburgh was $250k in 2002[*].

I'm surprised. That's roughly the going rate in two of the nicer neighborhoods, but way above the goaing rate for most parts of the city. Actually, now that I think about it, I suspect that some neighborhoods just don't have houses that fit that description -- while there are lots of houses of that size or a bit under out there, they aren't necessarily configured that way. (In particular, two-car garages aren't nearly as common as 4BR/2.5Ba houses.)

In any event, you seem to think that it will be trivial to replace those workers for as much or less money per hour; I think you are mistaken in that.

Perhaps you're right; I guess we'll find out. Conversely, though, if the workers were that upset with the package, why haven't they found better jobs elsewhere?