New York Diary

NY's "Fair" Employment Act

New York State Civil Service Law, Article 14, §210.2(f): Payroll deductions. Not earlier than thirty nor later than ninety days following the date of such determination, the chief fiscal officer of the government involved shall deduct from the compensation of each such public employee an amount equal to twice his daily rate of pay for each day or part thereof that it was determined that he had violated this subdivision...

December 16: The midnight deadline for the Transit Union to call a strike here in New York has come and gone, and the subways and busses are still running (much to the relief of the vast majority of the city). Contract negotiations haven't finished, but at least they seem to be getting somewhere; a new Tuesday deadline has been set, and we shall see if the city descends into chaos then. (Contingency plans seem a desparate effort, at best: no cars on the road with less than 4 passengers, taxis to pick up multiple passengers (but note the cabbies' claim that they won't be scabs for the MTA), walking lanes on bridges into town (as if commuters from Westchester are going to walk to Manhattan Island), and several streets closed to anything but emergency vehicles in anticipation of incredible gridlock. My company even went so far as to put people up in hotels in Manhattan so that they could get to work in the case of a strike.)

Needless to say, then, I'm pleased that I didn't have to walk two-and-a-half miles to work this morning. And, my populist tendencies aside, I have to say that I think the MTA has some solid proposals in this very disruptive, very tense dispute. I know the union hates the idea of conductorless, remote-controlled subway cars, for example, because it gets rid of many jobs--but it does seem the way forward into a more-efficient, more cost-effective, high-tech world. I know the union wants a bigger cut of the MTA's one-time budget surplus, too--but, I mean, half that surplus is going towards paying down debt on the employees' pension plans. It's not that the employees are getting screwed by the MTA, but rather that they won't see this money until they retire. And then, I suspect, they'll be glad for it.

So, in a different world, I might have great sympathy for the MTA, and I might even be inclined to tell the union to suck it up and compromise a little bit more: longer contracts in return for high-tech conductorless trains; no broadbanding (when one employee, often skilled, is required to do several unrelated, often unskilled, and usually lower-paying jobs in addition to her skilled work) in return for no one-time kickback from the MTA's surplus.

But you know what? In this world, I can't help but to be on the union's side all the way. That's because the MTA is shameless about playing the press, about screwing the union, and about not giving an inch at the negotiating table. Heck, everybody knew (for years!) that December 15 was the contract deadline. You'd think the MTA would have proposed a contract, then, by, oh, let's say December 8th. That would give them at least a week to try to hash out the details. But instead, they went to the governor, the mayor, the courts, and the press, outlining their demands. And they never--or not, at any rate, until very recently, handed the union a sheet of paper with proposed contract details. How is the union supposed to respond to hints of MTA contract negotiations, without actually seeing any well-formed proposal? Of course things went down to the wire; the union had no choice but to wait until they had a document to work with (and yes, it was the MTA's responsibility to propose the contract in the first place). When the papers asked union reps what they thought of the MTA's compensation proposals, what was the TWU supposed to say but, "We don't know, we haven't seen them yet?"

You know what gets me even more annoyed than the MTA, though?

The state.

In the last few days, I've learned a lot about New York's Public Employees' Fair Employment Act (generally known as the Taylor Law, perhaps in an attempt to replace the obvious misnomer in the proper name). I've even gone so far as to read the whole damned thing. It's horrible. How on earth can it be legal for New York State to ban strikes? To ban them. To fine striking workers twice their rate of pay for every day, or part of a day, that they strike. How can it be legal to simply presume that somebody who is out sick, and whose boss doesn't believe his excuse, can be fined for striking? (I quote: "An employee who is absent from work without permission, or who abstains wholly or in part from the full performance of his duties in his normal manner without permission, on the date or dates when a strike occurs, shall be presumed to have engaged in such strike on such date or dates" and shall be subject to all the punishments laid out in the law for strikers.) How can it be that, in determining whether a union helped foment a strike (thereby making it subject to extensive legal action), "compliance with the technical rules of evidence shall not be required?" Don't we Americans generally require evidence before the law? Don't we presume individuals to be innocent until proven guilty (instead of presumed to be striking--illegal!--if absent)?

To be sure, none of these provisions seem to be dissuading the union too much; transit workers seem almost eager to strike even if it means paying the required fines, while the union is declaring that possible financial and legal repercussions (to the tune of several million or even hundreds of millions of dollars) will not keep them from supporting a strike if need be (Governor Pataki's "don't do it!" and declarations of illegality clearly notwithstanding).

But why should they have to pay? I could choose not to come to work any day of the week. I could quit. I could walk off the job. My friends could do it, too. It wouldn't be nice; the company would be left in difficult straits; I'd be unemployed; our clients would be left in the lurch. And, to be sure, my company would be welcome to fire me or to withold pay for the days I was absent (beyond my paid leave, I suppose). But my government, certainly, has no right to fine me or, God forbid, throw me in jail if I don't pay their fine. That is one of the things that it means to be a free woman in an free society. That's why I live here, for goodness's sake. If I want to stop working--because I don't like working conditions, because I'm bored, because I get a better job offer, because I marry a rich guy, because whatever--I can. It's that simple. My government cannot, or at least, emphatically ought not, be able to tell me that it is illegal not to work--and even moreso should they not be able to tell me that it is illegal not to work for somebody in particular (in this case, the MTA)!

There is an argument, of course, for balancing public good against individual liberties. And, indeed, doing so is in fact the role of government. A transit strike would wreak havoc on this city, it's true, and perhaps that gives the government some special right to step in and arrange things, even to the detriment of individual transit workers. Forcing people to go to work, however, is going far, far too far. A government can arrange new forms of transportation (which might undermine the strike's effectiveness to some extent); it can let cabbies carry multiple passengers; it can stop street parking to open up more driving space in a congested city; but surely, surely, it cannot force people to work for the MTA if they don't want to.

posted by Skay @ 2:50 AM