My law final got postponed due to this. Maybe now I'll study for it and avoid failing.

Anyone else benefit?

God, I saw that on the news this morning. Ka-razy. I'd be pissed if I were a New Yorker right now.

That's what they get for living in the big city.

I'm so glad I live in a city with no mass transit and hardly any public transportation.

I walked to work today. Not too big of a deal...

took me 22 minutes....the subway, door to door, takes me 15.

hell no i didn't benefit. first, my school didn't close. second, my last final's a take-home anyway. third, i have to get to the airport on wednesday.

i am absolutely against the right of workers to strike when they are in a position to cause the rest of the city to lose orders of magnitude more than they stand to gain by striking.

Why would you even bother, then?

About 1/3 of the attraction we had to moving where we just did was that the wife can now walk to work. It's about a mile. She's giddy every day. And when temps get back above 40, my ass will be right back on that motorcycle, riding the 3 miles to school, to park under the building. The bus ride, by comparison, is painfully slow, crowded, annoying, and inflexible. But free.

also, why does human dignity require retirement with a pension at 55 only for jobs that require no education?

[/rant]

because usually having those jobs means that you're not going to live as long?

i know some mta-related jobs are high-risk, and certainly there should be allowances for those, but a switching operator? not exactly an asbestos technician.

as a new new yorker, i actually enjoy a little systemic breakdown

Are LIRR people a different union or something? I was thinking about taking the LIRR out to Long Island one fo these days, but I'm not getting in a half-mile long line to do so. That's crazy.

And the job sucks and doesn't pay as well as others who have the opportunity to invest in their own retirement plans.

Do you get an 8 percent annual raise from your firm, Timmy?

i wouldn't even hear the rest of the conversation before hanging up the phone is somene offered me a job in NYC making $60k.

as a what?

Edit: nevermind.

as a "motorman" i guess.

that's fine, but your preferences have little bearing on what's reasonable. i know everybody thinks that the salaries in NYC scale with the cost of living, but they don't, and those salaries are well above average.

The counter-argument to this is that:

1. You can get this job with no education (as haq mentioned).
2. It has state benefits. Health care ain't cheap or easy.
3. It's clean, dry, you wear a uniform, and you can tell your kids what you do, unlike McDonalds.
4. It seems to be impossible to get fired from.


Were I a 35-yr-old guy with no education or prospects, and too ugly to work in porn, I would be on that job like a cardigan on Haq.

well find me the data on the average wages and the number of years on the job all these people have, or shut the fuck up with the whining and figure out how to get to the airport.

You can retire after 25 years, Upton.

I read this online in the Yahoo news:



If current salary ranges are between $35K and $55K, that doesn't seem like much for NYC.

I'm not condoning a strike. I just think they have a point, and with


I think the union has a piece of that $1 billion to gain.

cause im reaaaaaaaly lazy.

Right, I was saying the demand for 8% was unreasonable. If they were asking for cost-of-living, it would be a different story.



$35,000 is a pretty high starting salary for New York, and that is probably for the janitorial staff. Our data conflicts on the average/max, but I seriously doubt the highest pay for any NYC transit worker is $55,000.



The surplus is from taxes - it's at least as reasonable a request that that money benefit riders, as the MTA has suggested.