As I've only been a New Yorker for two months now, and didn’t know my TWU from my MTA until this week, I’ve been having a bit of trouble making sense of the ongoing transit strike. After a lot of thinking and reading, here's where I come down.

As a matter of principle, I support need for unions to do what is necessary to protect their workers. Organized labor won us many of the rights that we know enjoy as working people, of course. It’s because of their importance that we shouldn’t support bad behavior on their part.

I have great sympathy for the transit workers who dislike their jobs. It is unfortunate that people have to work underground all day long. But Bloomberg is reporting that subway conductors make more than $62,000 and booth operators more than $50,000. If those numbers are accurate, it’s hard for me to imagine how those aren’t adequate rates of compensation for those jobs. One sociologist that worked for four years as a subway conductor says that part of the problem
for transit workers is an abusive and hurtful public. Doesn’t seem like calling for a strike one week before Christmas is going to improve that situation.

We can argue about the high cost of living today, health and wellness, work/life balance, service jobs, how we spend money on stuff we don’t need. But this isn’t about those things. This is about propping up a system that over-rewards certain jobs just because the relevant union has the power to bring the city to a halt.

The bigger picture for me is that the only constant is change. The very idea of work is evolving in this country. We can either come up with new progressive ideas to deal with that reality or try to keep the old model up creaking along with duct tape and a prayer.

All that said -- I know that I should take no joy from a situation that is causing a lot of trouble for everyone involved, but man do I love New York. Interesting and important stuff happens here and everybody has an opinion. Fantastic.