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

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, it's a government job, and the government is supposed to save its people money. There are also apparently more than enough people out there who find the striking employees' situation reasonable.

On the other hand, as an underpaid union member with what has to be one of the crappiest contracts in AFTRA history, I can see where workers would want to strike to hold onto what they've got. I mean, if your employer said, "As a reward for your good work, we want to cut or not raise your pay, and we want to cut your health benefits to nothing," how would you feel?

[cellio]

I mean, if your employer said, "As a reward for your good work, we want to cut or not raise your pay, and we want to cut your health benefits to nothing," how would you feel?

If my employer actually said that I'd be pretty angry, but it doesn't sound like that's what's happening here.

Just about every employer I've worked for has, at some point, said "we can no longer afford the exact health-care package you now have" and given us something different instead. So far it hasn't sucked for me (maybe I'm lucky). In this case, they're replacing an HMO with fully-paid Highmark. I've neaver heard of a Highmark plan that sucked, and whatever it is, they're getting the same plan as the managers making the decision. So I'm not sure there's actually a problem with health care in this case. The new contract also provided for raises, not pay cuts -- and job guarantees for three years, a luxury few get.

I understand striking to hold onto what you've got; while some union contracts are abusive to the employers, others are abusive to the employees. I would also hate being subject to collective bargaining in the first place; I want to be able to individually negotiate for my own position, thank you, and would resent it if I were required to join a union as a condition of employment. I want to sink or swim based on my own actions, not on those of union bosses who feather their nests at my expense or who pull stupid antics that turn public opinion against me.

(In a lot of ways, I think unions in the US have just plain outlived their usefulness. But that's a different rant. :-) )

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I'm now seeing where unions are needed, oddly enough. While I was away on Labor Day weekend, temperatures in our office exceeded 90F. There was no air conditioning and no way to open a window. People had to pull eight hour shifts in that kind of heat.

Folks had been complaining to our boss about the heat on weekends for a couple of months (the building would turn off the air conditioning on weekends), and he said it'd cost him some huge amount of $$$ (I forget the number) to keep it on for those days, and said he didn't have the budget for it.

Labor Day weekend my co-workers banded together. One wrote a letter, and everyone signed it. Copies went to the union and to upper management, but it wasn't until the union contacted upper management that action happened (the funny-looking standalone unit, then real air conditioning).

[cellio]

I expect that a complaint to OSHA would have produced similar results. We now have legal remedies for lots of things that previously required unions to fix; if you hadn't had the union you would have gone straight to them, right?

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Actually, OSHA doesn't take complaints about workplace temperature, as it only has guidelines and not regulations about the subject. In my previous day job we had the same problem, but no way to get management to not force us to work in those conditions (yes, I tried contacting OSHA). Here we had a union to fight for us.