STRIKE!
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
You may or may not know it, but strikes seem to be breaking out all over the place in the last few weeks. Here in the United States, the one getting the most attention is the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike. The writers of your favorite television shows and movies are currently picketing on both coasts. If you haven’t been paying attention, this probably has slipped under your radar, but it may become all that more attention getting in a month or so when there is the potential for virtually every television network to go into lengthy reruns or reality programming.
While this really doesn’t affect the transit industry, it’s interesting to see how one group has the potential to grind an entire industry to a halt. Sure, there have been transit strikes that have shut down systems, but nothing has shut down the entire transit network — at least not here in the United States.
Of more interest to the transit industry is the current strike going on in France. To bring people up to speed, a strike has been called by the leading transit workers’ unions to oppose a plan by the French president to eliminate early retirement for the transit workers.
The thing here that we in the U.S. may find it hard to wrap our heads around is that when the transit workers in France strike, they don’t shut Paris down, they shut France down. About 10 percent of France’s trains were running on Wednesday, with slightly more on Thursday. That’s 10 percent for all of France. So let’s say we shut down all of the transit systems in the U.S. except for say those in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and North and South Dakota.
Now add to this the strikers from the electric and gas companies who shut down nuclear plants, effectively ending electricity production for a large part of the country. Students also were striking, shutting down two-thirds of the universities. And within the next week civil servants, teachers, postal workers, telecommunications workers, bank employees and judicial magistrates are expected to strike.
Now all of these divergent groups aren’t striking for the same thing, but they are all in opposition of reforms by France’s president. As one union leader put it, “This is no longer just a strike. It’s a resistance movement.”
And the interesting thing is that public sentiment is with the strikers.
For those of you who have suffered through strikes here in the U.S., think about having not just the transit officials, but multiple different groups all striking at the same time in your city or state.
As you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner next week, take a moment and remember you may have more to be thankful for than you thought.
Thanks for reading. Due to the holiday here in the U.S., there won’t be an MT Position next week.
See you in two weeks,
November 16th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
A while back, New York City got hit with a transit workers strike and it nearly paralyzed the place.
I always point out to transit advocates that people who drive their own cars are dependent on the government only to provide them with the streets and highways. Where as transit riders are dependent on the government to provide the streets, the vehicle, and the driver.
People want to be independent as possible (especially from the government) and they view relying on mass transit as being antithetical to this idea.
November 20th, 2007 at 8:29 am
That’s not quite accurate, Galen. Although private automobiles do not require a paid driver, they most certainly rely on government services to keep their transport systems functioning well. Without police, fire, paramedic, and towing services, traffic control could not be maintained and accidents could not be cleared. Without accidents being cleared, the highway system would be crippled.
However, the advantage of highways in this regard is that these public servants are generally not allowed to strike. But this is an issue of public policy. (Note: I recognize that the New York strike was illegal in this regard and the union got heavily penalized for that–largely the reason that such an incident is so rare in New York.)
I will also point out that in general, regardless of how independent people want to be, they cannot escape the fact that a transportation system is inherently composed of interdependencies, meaning that even if drivers feel “independent” in their cars, they are nonetheless still dependent on the transit system to shoulder a significant portion of the travel capacity. When the transit system shuts down, cars do not remain unaffected (one of the reasons public outcry against them tends to be large).
November 20th, 2007 at 10:47 am
While I agree that people want to be as independent as possible in some ways, it’s mostly with regard to having the freedom to do as they please. I don’t think anybody really wants to take complete responsibility for everything they need. Nobody has cows in the back yard for milk or for meat, not many people who live in suburbia have chickens, and a great many people have the car because they HAVE to have the car. I noted a news story recently reporting that 23% of people who join Zipcar end up selling their own personal vehicle.
Any time you take something from “the government,” whoever that is, you are taking something, somewhere. Highways are the most space-consuming form of transportation. A single cloverleaf intersection can take 200-300 acres. That isn’t “independent.” Someone had to buy that land, build that highway, and keep it maintained. The same applies to local streets, and all the various services, such as street lighting, plowing, sanding, cleaning, and so on.
Transit permits people to be “independent” of a great many other things. Car payments, gasoline bills, insurance costs, time spent in jams, pollution, and so on. The drivers who operate the transit systems (and some future systems in place in some areas don’t even have them) do deserve a proper compensation in light of the services they provide.
To return to the situation in France, do recall that France is much smaller and more integrated functionally than the US. What they are striking about is early retirement. That probably is out of control, as is the amount of paid time off that they enjoy (virtually every holy day is a holiday). But it’s not realistic to change the rules for those who have been working under these expectations for decades. Maybe to revise, incrementally, the rules of engagement for future employees, but retroactively, no.