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.

---

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

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

"What's the correct way to address the governor, anyway? I don't think it's Dear Governor".

Apparently it is. P-) (<< smiling pirate w/eyepatch)
The envelope is addressed to:
The Honorable Firstname Surname
Governor of Pennsylvania
Street Address

The letter is addressed to:
Dear Governor Surname

If you need to look up anyone else...
http://www.svls.lib.ca.us/SVLS/html/lawmakers/correct_form.html
-- Dagonell

[siderea]

Um, if they're using good old fashioned Manpower or Kelly light industrial temps making $10/hr they're paying $20/hr for them (Manpower and Kelly take 50%); if they're making $15, the state is being charged $30. Also, my understanding is that toll takers can't be just any temps -- because they're unattended money-takers, they have to pass a background check, for which the agency charges more.

There's no reason to assume they're paying the temps no more than the striking workers. Do you have information to that effect?

Out of curiosity, for what are they striking?

[eub.livejournal.com]

Treating the strike as an act of sabotage is just not an option that's on the table, the way the law sees the two. I think the letter would be rhetorically stronger without that distraction.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

You should look up the results of the airline controllers strike when Regan did what you are suggesting.

[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.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

It's hard to make a taxpayer argument about the Turnpike because, theoretically at least, all the costs are covered by tolls. For a while there was a sign posted somewhere along the Turnpike that boasted that no taxpayer dollars were spent for over 40 years or something like that. I suspect that the waters are muddier than that but it still makes the taxpayer case harder to stand on.

[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?

Ire-up

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

If you really want to provoke controversy, send the letter to the Governor and to the biggest Pittsburgh paper at the same time.

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

My darling employee/lover/fishkeeper put it well. "The Safari Health Plan is Fish antibiotics and and massage, isn't it?" My reply: Not getting anything better than you. Until it's a real emergency or you're having one. What we get reduced to.