It used to be (I don't know about now) that 20 years in the military got you a half-salary for life, which meant I knew guys who "retired" at 40.

Some points:

--$55,000 a year is *not* "good money" in New York City, where it's been calculated one needs about $65,000 for a family of four to get by.

--Take a look at this post by a TWU worker. It explains a great deal about why early retirement is appropriate.

--Other municipal unions (police, fire, santitaton) have the same retirement age, 55, and i the last negotiation with the teachers, Bloomberg promised to support their bid for early retirement with the state legislature. What the TWU wanted was to remain at parity with their compatriots.

I'm self-employed. I agree that if you work for a pension, you should get what was agreed to.

But for a lot of us, a pension is something that just isn't going to happen.

It used to be you could enlist, get out, get a federal job, retire, and then collect your military pension, your federal pension, and Social Security.

Somehow, the outrage wasn't that great, except for the dipping into the well three times. I guess because in those days, people thought a pension came as part of the American Dream, like a car or house.

Boy, we were so deluded back in those liberal Eisenhower days.

It took me three and a half hours to get home on Wednesday, including a 66 block walk, and Kevin, I think you are full of it. Most people don't breathe steel dust and asbestos on a daily basis. And even if most people don't have pensions as good as the TWU's, maybe that's because most people aren't unionized. The reasoning that the TWU should accept a cut in benefits because most nonunionized workers have it worse is perverse to say the least. That's a slave mentality that would allow companies to cut benefits to nothing, as workers blithely shrugged, "Hey, most people have it worse."

I'm surprised that someone thinks
1. That a family can live in NYC on 55K a year and be upwardly mobile.

and
2. you can retire on 27K a year and live within NYC and not eat dog food 3 times a week. Not gonna happen.

Most of the point of sweet early 55 retirement is to get a turnover. People become expensive as they get older. There is salary but also there is health insurance. The older you get the more expensive you are to insure.

Also since the 80's the notion that anyone who has been around for 25 years and/or is 55 is almost by definition deadwood-resistant to change, inflexible. True or not that has been a management mantra.

So it seems to me that the implication that the union has a sweet deal and that it is somehow their fault is a bit excessive. You can likely find similar arrangements in any insurance company which is just chock full of white collar non-union types and they have that deal for exactly the same reasons.

If they are going to raise the age of pensions for the transit workers they should start weaning the merc's ( thugs in uniform present military) of the government dole as well.

No military pensions until 65.

This post is uninteresting in and of itself. This post would be more interesting if you posted statistics as to what percentage of Americans are eligible for early-retirement (perhaps comparing that to 1960, and 1980).

And boobies. The post would be more interesting with boobies.

Think of the boobies!

I was amused to see comments over at the TWU's "unofficial blog" (apparently the comments were removed at some point, though Instapundit links to someone who mirrored them) from people saying they didn't want no stinkin' coughin' 62-year-olds driving the bus anyway.

If this were about anyone but old people, it'd be bigotry. As it is, I'll take the posters' word for it that it's all about the safety of the public. I do hope that the people wanting TWU members to retire at 55 attempt to make that mandatory, since having someone over age 55 driving a bus (or a train) is apparently unsafe for the passengers.

Dudes, walk, already.

Ed: What's the median salary in NYC? I'll bet it's less than $55K. But in any case, like I said, I don't have any problem with TWU's salary structure.

Technowitch: everyone agrees that current workers who were promised a pension are entitled to whatever they were promised. I don't think that's an issue.

Tia: Generally I agree, but there are limits. The status quo isn't always reasonable, and retirement at age 55 with only 25 years of service seems hard to defend. I think most Americans (including me) are fine with the idea of decent pay for hard work, but equate sweet retirement plans like TWU's (and others) as an excuse to avoid hard work. In the end, it probably reduces support for unions.

On the health issues and working conditions: I don't know much about this, but if it's really as bad as everyone is saying, the union ought to be pushing for better working conditions, not early retirement. Something doesn't add up there.

because in those days, people thought a pension came as part of the American Dream

Pensions are deferred compensation. The deal on them is work now but get paid later. I don't know how they ever came to be considered a gift...they are earned.

Those companies that are bailing on their pension promises are stealing from their employees.

--Emma

Thanks for advocating a race to the bottom Kevin.
Lets pit workers without adequate pensions against workers with adequate pensions. Teachers, veterans, policemen, fire-fighters. Lavish lifestyles!

The transit workers were right to strike, and damn-it, if you think their pension is so great, learn to control a train or bus. New York is the most expensive place on earth and dangerous too. How would you like to cut your way through it for hours and hours a day for a barely living wage?

When do we start caring for people again and congratulating them for decades of service?

Kevin-- some of the previous commenters on federal excesses are absolutely right. I am a federal employee who is under what is called the "FERS" system, which started around 1986. Most civilian feds who were hired after that date are on this program, which consists of a modest pension, but is primarily funded by the 401(k)-like Thrift Savings Plan, into which employees contribute, and the feds match up to a certain limit. It's a nice deal but nothing excessive.

But, just about all of the feds retiring now are doing so under the CSRS (Civil Service Retirement System), under which persons can retire with thirty years of service at age 55, and get about 70% of their salary as a pension!!!

And the number of people who double dip-- i.e., take retirement from the gov or the military and then come back and work as consultants, often making more as consultants than they ever did as employees, is astounding.

Finally, I think the commenters who disagreed with you about this being an excessively good deal for NYC transit employees are right. Compare that to your typical private sector retirement plan (ok, so many folks don't have ANY pension) and it is probably at or slightly below average.

Keep up the good work.

sometime in the past the unions asked for the pension deal they now have. do you blame them for asking? sometime after they asked for the deal, presumably after due consideration, management agreed to it. whose fault is this deal again? and after *you* worked for 24 years would it be ok with you to change the deal? as a previous poster pointed out, pensions are deferred compensation, not presents from santa.

I don't really have any bigger point to make here.

I have made the point that public employee unions are illiberal. Automatic Democratic support for them is frequently not in the public interest, and probably not in the interest of the Democratic party. Obviously, unions are not uniformly and automatically bad, but they are not uniformly and automatically good either, and their strong influence in the Democratic party is a flaw in the Democratic party that you ought to examine more.

In the recent California elections the public employee unions spent much more money opposing Gov. Schwarzenegger's initiatives than his supporters (including businesses) spent supporting the initiatives. Anybody concerned with the supposedly malign influence of money in politics needs to be concerned with this. Since the money comes from taxpayers who have to pay or go to jail, we have a system where taxpayers fund the efforts to raise their own taxes. It's not malign (to quote myself), but a person who worries more about corporate influence than union influence needs to reconsider.

Still looking for the specific reference to the amount a family of four needs to get by in NYC, but untl I find it, there's this:

New York City is one of the most expensive cities to live in. Mercer Resource Consulting ranked as the 12th most expensive city in the world with Tokyo at number one, London at number two and Moscow at number three. In 2003, New York was ranked ten but due to currency fluctuations between the dollar and the Euro, 1:1, 0.8:1, European cities have surged to the top. Within the United States, New York remains the most expensive city with Los Angeles at twenty-seven and Chicago at thirty-five. The median income of a New York is $60,765, $10,000 more than the national median. Based on a US average at an index of 100.0, the overall cost of living in New York is 189.1. Housing is almost triple the national average at $314,000 for a house and $2,483.64 for one months rent of a two bedroom apartment. Secondary education is about $2,000 more than the national average at $7,428. Utilities, including electricity and gas, are almost twice the national index at 179.9. Food and groceries is about 1.5x the nation's index at 142.5. A mere cup of coffee with table service is $5.48 while in Buenos Aires, ranked 141st, the same service costs $1.10. In fact, despite attaining a lower ranking than cities like London and Tokyo, one thing remains the most expensive in New York, phone service for one month at $25.99. The cheapest city surveyed by Mercer Resource Consulting was Pittsburgh ranked 112th. According to the index, a person who earns $50,000 in Pittsburgh will need $97,9776 in New York. Overall, New York City is two-times as expensive as any other city in the United States.

Kevin:

As reported, the median income in NYC is $60,765.

DH,

You're wrong about CSRS, a 55 year old with 30 years of service would get only 56% of their average salary (NOT 70%).

I think Kevin is correct, but not for the reasons some of the posters seem to think. Its not that the municipal unions somehow have an unfair advantage in having an early pension and so need to be spanked. It is that the system that developed over time doesnt make demographic sense. Many of the age threshholds of the old economy were set at a time when many Americans died in their 50s and 60s of heart attacks and lung cancer. Also, our growing population had many more yound people relative to old. If people live longer in the care of modern medicine and more sensible life habits, young workers must become much more productive to support the growing ranks of oldsters. There is a limit to how much increased productivity can accomplish, and oldsters are healthier than before. (Everyone can think of counter examples, but spend some time reviewing the lives of mid-century Americans and you will be shocked at how young many of them were at death.)

So I think we are all, as a society, need to adjust to the concept of working longer. Maybe not at the same jobs. This means that we need to pay attention to the workplace more. It would be wiser to invest energy to improve the environment at work than to defend a set of retirement threshholds that are unsustainable demographically.

So, by the stats I just posted, a TWU worker earning $55,000 is the equivalent of a worker in Pittsburg earning $28,000. The national Federal poverty threshold (wide thought to be too low) for a family of 4 is $18,850.

Whatever way you slice is, $55,000 is *not* comfortably middle class in NYC. Knowing this is not a matter of knowing stats: I live here, our family income is higher than that, and we're definitely struggling. We're not starving, there's always food and clothes, but we live paycheck to paycheck and sometimes have to put aside some bills until we can afford to pay them.

I would say that $100,000 is comfortably middle class here.

Kevin if you are concerned about this you should also be concerned about similar situation closer to Irvine.

niversity of California system, if you retire after 25 years at 55, you get half of your salary as pension for life, with health benefits.

Papageno: there is enough to go around. People who grouse about public unions and unions in general are simply wrong. There is nothing wrong with people making a living wage. There is a weird dynamic about the value of work and hence, the value of people in this country. I would like to see more wage equity in America, and I would like to see an age where unios are not necessary to ensure a decent way of life-but I don't think Democrats should ever propound that some workers have it too good. People working in Wendys or Washington Monthly should be respected, and should have a reasonable chance at upward mobility. Those grousing about municipal, state or federal pensions, are clueless--it is sad when the only decent retirement income is from government service. Business should have shared more all along. There is a great post over at Kos tonight on this issue. Work should be valued, but workers more valued. Kevin's naive posting here shows that even progressives have much to learn.
There is enough for everyone, but we are tearing each other apart for the scraps at the bottom.

And I should point out, that retiring frees jobs for the 10-million workers who gave up finding a job in this economy. We should encourage 20-25 pensions in all jobs to give more workers a chance at finding a chance at upward mobility. Or we can just open up more large Wal-Marts next to the shelters and free clinics in every town. Look at Judy Miller's pension should you want to scream about unwarranted compensation. Or any CEO. Somehow, those don't get the MSM coverage.

$55K with overtime is hardly a great salary. Just because Republican administartions gutted the Labor department to allow everyone to suddenly be salaried workers means that only union employees tend tog et overtime. And their pension would be half of their base salary which is likely closer to $40-45K so a pension of $20K or so.

KEVIN DRUM: But retiring at age 55, with 25 years on the job, at half salary? I support unions and I support the notion that Americans work too much — but even so that strikes as indefensible.

KEVIN DRUM [a bit later] ..retirement at age 55 with only 25 years of service seems hard to defend.

What strikes me is that I've never seen a post from you bemoaning the fact that millions of people devote decades of their lives to their jobs only to be left without any pension at all. And I don't see posts from you complaining about the obscene pensions given to those whose salaries should have insured their comfort without any further drain on society.

Like so many pseudo-liberals, you are married not to equality or even fairness, but to elitism. You actually believe that being born with wealth or beauty or talents or industrious parents or any number of other guiding hands are not rewards enough on their own. You believe such good fortune deserves further reward, ad infinitum. Tell me, do you also buy into congress's favorite reason for upping their pay? Namely, that in order to get the best and brightest we have to pay them ever more? Right. I guess that's why our lawmakers today represent the current state of perfectibility.

Your outrage, even in its revised and reduced form, is ugly and pretentiously patrician. If the time comes when transit workers are no longer needed, when it occurs that any of the lowest level of laborers are obsolete for lack of their necessity, then will be the time to decry their overpayment of salary or benefits. New York was brought to its knees as a result of the transit strike, but if Bill Gates calls in sick tomorrow it will cause not even a ripple at Microsoft, much less in New York.

Sorry my last post of somehow truncated.

In the University of California system, if you retire after 25 years at 55, you get half of your salary as pension for life, with health benefits. And if you retire at 60 with 30 years of service, you get 75% of salary as pension for life, duly indexed for inflation. (the factor is 2.5% per year of service if you retir after 60, 2% otherwise.)

Rather than complain about such generous packages we should try to make sure that all of us get it.

Sounds like the slam against NYC transit workers has as much credence as the myth of cadillac driving welfare mothers. Just because others are being screwed by this utopian free market system is no reason to go after those who are maybe just making it in their marketplace.
A true liberal would be working for a living wage for all, affordable housing, universal health care and education, a reduction in the absurd disparity between wages,salaries, and benefits at the ends of the continuum, hefty short term capital gains taxes, estate taxes, progressive taxes, global labor standards....

According to this 2000 report, the monthly self-sufficiency wage for 2 adults with 2 kids (a preschooler and a schoolage kid) in New York City is (by county):

Bronx - $4,006 per month ($48,072/yr)
Brooklyn - $4,107 ($49,284)
Lower Manhattan - $6,328 ($75,936)
Upper Manhattan - $4,373 ($52,476)
Staten Island - $4,248 ($50,976)

This is from five years ago, of course, so the current figures would undoubtedly be higher.

The "Self-Sufficiency Standard" is described in this way:

As a standard of income adequacy, the Self-Sufficiency Standard defines the amount of income required to meet basic needs (including paying taxes) in the regular “marketplace” without public or private/informal subsidies. The Standard, therefore, determines the level of income necessary for a given family—whether working now or making the transition to work—to be independent of welfare and/or other public or private subsidies. By providing a measure that is customized to each family’s circumstances, i.e., taking account of where they live, and how old their children are, the Self-Sufficiency Standard makes it possible to determine if a family’s income is enough to meet their basic needs.

I live in lower Manhattan, where the self-sufficiency wage was $76k, which seems pretty correct to me.

"They average $55,000 a year, including overtime."

This is probably misleading. When the Longshoreman struck a couple of years ago they trotted out the same type of statistic !!They average $100,000 a year!! That was the number the New York Times loudly publicized.

Not quite. First of all, they used the wrong average, the mean rather than the median.

Secondly, it was only for fulltime workers, not the 30% who were part timers.

Thirdly, the overtime required for a Longshoreman to make $100k is 20 hours a week. I don't begrudge a good wage to folks working 50% overtime.

All of you who think that the NYC workers get too much salary should apply for a job at the MTA.

Before bemoaning what a rich deal these transit workers get (and calling it indefensible), one might want to get a more complete picture by looking at statistics on the health problems that NYC transit workers face compared to workers in other industries, and their life expectancies. Let me note up front that I do not have these facts, but they are salient to whether the thing can be defended or not. Specifically, I wonder if the 55 retirement age is not that different in actuarial terms from other kinds of retirement plans (with retirement at 65) when all of this is taken into consideration.

I personally do not see how one could even conceive of living in NYC on half of 55K.

McDruid also raises a good point. The coverage has been so slanted against the transit workers that I would not necessarily trust the 55K number without a lot more detail about where it came from.

From the census info in GoogleEarth, the median family income (1999) in New York City was:

New York County (manhattan): $50,229
Queens County: $48,608
Richmond County (Staten Island): $64,330
Kings County (Brooklyn): $36,118
Bronx County: $30,682

Not sure exactly how "family" is defined, but can't be larger than 2 adults + 2 children. Anyway, the point is that contrary to what many posters are saying here, $55K from is a perfectly livable (an above average, and I assure you the average family in New York does not eat dog food even once a week) salary in most of New York City.

As a grad student living in upper Manhattan just a few years ago, I lived perfectly comfortably (with no dependents) on 18K a year.

Oh lookie, here's a real figure, from a source more trustworthy than the New York Times:

Mean hourly wage for New York City transit workers: $21.47 (compared to $19.78 in San Jose, CA and $18.23 in Memphis TN) Median wage is $23/hr.

Annual Mean wage: $44,650 (compared to 41,140 in San Jose and $37,920 in Memphis)

Grade A US government numbers for 2003 from:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/2003/may/oes533021.htm

If you do not like it, do not use the MTA. The labor contract was negotiated in a 'free' market, but eh consumer is not obligated to pay to use the transit system.

Sorry Kevin, love your blog, but jayarbee is right on.

"Your outrage, even in its revised and reduced form, is ugly and pretentiously patrician. If the time comes when transit workers are no longer needed, when it occurs that any of the lowest level of laborers are obsolete for lack of their necessity, then will be the time to decry their overpayment of salary or benefits."

Yep.

I think those of us who work at desk jobs have difficulty appreciating the relatively short work life that is possible for people who do hard labor. My understanding is that most of the MTA jobs are pretty physically demanding. My husband works with people who have become disabled doing jobs like these, who suddenly discover they're only eligible for minimum wage jobs, after being accustomed to making good money. They're in an awful bind. I think it's just not possible for most people to do hard labor after about age 55. It's different for people in white-collar jobs.

Pesnion rates are often set based on the rate of return of the investment fund versus the expected rate of consumption. You have to factor in stock market performance as well as actuarial data for your expected retireees. It may be the case that the pesion managers felt that in the case of the NY transit workers the 50% at 55 formula was workable without a significant increase in employer contribution to the fund. Does anyone have information about this?

A post just to make a lame point. How did Kevin put it, oh yes:

"I don't really have any bigger point to make here."

If Kevin thinks that the transit workers of NYC have it so good, why doesn't he become one? I mean, how many of us in the relative comfort and periphery of white collar work would do many of the jobs that transit workers do? Not many, I bet.

Seems that Kevin is content and willing to have us all race to the bottom when it comes to workers' rights.

One thing is for certain, Kevin; when all you young folks hit the age of 40, you will be looking at life without rose-colored glasses. If you only knew how great my parents had it during the U.S. heyday of a good pension; generous vacation, sick day, wages and health care. The TWU is taking a stand on principle, which is a good lesson for all of us because at least they have a real vision of the future and its not going to be the Tale of Two Cities. Yes, nyc is very, very expensive, and yes, working on the subsway lines is like working the coal mines. Just being a passenger makes you know the stench and filth of the job.

This discussion is full of self-righteousness and a lack of civility (not from all participants mind you).

It's one thing to believe in one's rightness, but it's another to suggest that someone else's disagreement is a moral failing or separates them from being worthy of a group (i.e. "real liberals").

When watching "Bowling For Columbine", I wondered what the movie suggested about Americans vs. Canadians, a question he didn't actually answer.

With Americans, when we disagree, we turn everything into a moral question and demonize those who disagree with us. In that sense, we have not outgrown our Puritanical origins (culturally).

And that pretty much everyone does it (of all political stripes is further evidence).

So that's the larger point.

The smaller point is: People, make your points, I agree with many of them. Don't go after, call names or somehow demean those you're arguing against --it doesn't really strengthen your argument.

I don't understand why people don't generally think that any job should be a good job, with reasonable pay and decent benefits.

There's the attitude that "I don't get that, so why should they?" Which side are you on, bub? You ought to be getting that too. You shouldn't be against the rare American that gets a decent break.

And merry Christmas to all.

Bad Jim,

I don't get that either.

Wishing someone well is the equivalent of employing, "there but for the grace of God go I". Hey, I could be driving a bus if things get tough!

I could be in their shoes and then how would I want to be treated? And if you're making less than them, you should hope that any blue-collar worker does well because in theory that helps you.

Fascinating thing is median income nationally is something like 50k? If that's the case, the highest paid NY Transit workers are only 5k above that? Is that right? Anyone who drive a bus or train in NYC deserves to be well-paid --that's damn hard work. Oh yeah, them and the garbage men .

I wish they had not struck when they did and without better PR in advance, but I don't begrudge them of respect in the form of good pay, benefits and a decent increase for the current contract.

You're awfully glib, Drum.

Others before me have said it well, but to your comment about "On the health issues and working conditions: I don't know much about this, but if it's really as bad as everyone is saying, the union ought to be pushing for better working conditions, not early retirement. Something doesn't add up there."

Have you ever been involved in labor contract negotiations? Without knowing the specifics of the history of what's been the history of the MTA's labor negotiations (but knowledgeable about labor contract negotiations in California's public service sector), I can pretty much guarantee you that the workers have been on the short end of the stick for decades of contracts. What do you think a union can do about health and working conditions when the solution is going to cost what the city says is "bankrupting"?

Here, Drum, what's the solution to this?

Train operators complain about the fear of driving through tunnels filled with debris; female workers recently went public with descriptions of the rusted, filthy, freezing bathrooms provided for them.
Few riders know, for instance, that transit workers have to ask for a day off 30 days in advance. Back in October, in an annual ritual, some MTA workers slept on cots in bus depots so they could be first on line the next morning to ask for permission to take Thanksgiving off.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/375722p-319283c.html

The solutions to these problems is more money. More money to hire more workers to clear the debris in tunnels, more money to renovate, clean and heat bathrooms, more money to hire more workers so that more workers can get holidays off.

What do you think it would cost to filter the air so that these workers aren't breathing in heavy metal all day long?

The transit authority cries poor:

None of that got mentioned at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's news conference at the Grand Hyatt on Friday when talks broke down. Peter Kalikow, the MTA chairman, flanked by Executive Director Katherine Lapp and labor negotiator Gary Dellaverson, declared the talks at an impasse and earnestly pleaded that there was no more money to put on the table.
Unfortunately, Kalikow and the MTA have long since thrown away their credibility. The agency lost $300 million to fraud and cost overruns at its own headquarters, leading Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to tell my colleague Michael Goodwin, "Of all the authorities, the MTA is the most mismanaged, least competent one out there, and everybody knows it." That's putting it mildly. This is the agency that Controller Alan Hevesi found kept two sets of books - one for the public, and the real numbers. The same place that claimed a deficit, then a small surplus, and then a billion-dollar surplus - which the MTA voted to spend down last week even as the strike deadline approached.
So when Dellaverson told reporters that "the bucket is full" and that no more money could be offered to workers, it was almost comical. A reporter asked how much money it would take to meet the union's supposedly unreasonable demands, Dellaverson waffled.
"I have a spreadsheet upstairs," he said. "I haven't run it."

Drum, the air didn't stay polluted, the bathrooms didn't go uncleaned, the workers weren't given holidays off for years because of union dereliction. The city chose the cheapest way to get workers to run the transportation system: retirement pension at 55. It wasn't for any other reason than it was cheaper for them to continue to operate their business as a health hazard with miserable working conditions and they weren't going to budge.

When every contract negotiation comes along and a union tries to dig its' heels in, threaten to strike, and a city plays the class card ("They're getting paid a fortune, more than you, and they want to strike, keeping you from getting to work"), a clown like you comes along to help the city. The city, who is keeping a double set of books!

How the hell do you call yourself a democrat, much less a liberal? You've got much to learn about labor negotiations and contracts, especially in the public service sector, before you weigh in with an opinion.

I support unions and I support the notion that Americans work too much, but even so that strikes me as indefensible.
So you don't actually support unions?
Without information your bias is that the union'n position is indefensible?
Shouldn't you have said:
I have a bias against unions and the great unwashed masses so, naturally, this strikes me as indefensible.

Holy Cow! 25 years on a job with a $27,000 a year pension is indefensible? Do you think ANYONE can live on $27K in New York City? Yeah, you're supposed to save, too, but at $55K with two kids in New York that's not so easy.

They have another 10 good years to work another job after that, which is not enough time to get a supplemental pension.

Liberals and progressives need to realize that retirement security is something we should be fighting for, not something to be resented.

And I'm management.

Linkmeister, Trying living on that military retirement as age 40. Impossible. The promise of that retirement check is what Uncle Sam needed to do to get one to miss a whole bunch of Christmas’, children’s birthdays, wedding anniversarys and a lot of other family events.

Dipping, Hey, dude, I payed into Social Security for 45 years. I think I earned that SS check I get every month ‘cuz over 6% of my pay went to the Social Security Administration. And yes afte I served 21 years in the Navy, for which I get a check every month, I went to work as a Computer Specialist for the civilian side of the federal government. And I paid into that retirement system, also.

If it is against the law for transit workers in New York to strike, what incentive is there for management to bargain in good faith?

How many folks reading this blog are a) over 55 years old and b) still doing manual labor? It is nice to have a college education and sit in a clean office. But someone must take care of the subway system. We aren’t talking just train drivers here. Somebody must maintain the track, maintain the cars, maintain the stations, clean up all the refuse et al. And if all they are earning is $55,000 a year, why, hell, they deserve more.

Kevin, I read you several times a day. But I must ask, how long has it been since you’ve had a job where you had to scrape the dirt from under your fingernails after you got off work?

Beardsley pretty well nailed it. He? has a lot more info than I but the feelings are about the same.

> but if it's really as bad as everyone is
> saying, the union ought to be pushing for better
> working conditions, not early retirement.

It is the nature of some jobs, particularly those involving heavy outdoor physical labor (railroads, eh?), that their conditions cannot really be improved. When it is 33 degrees and sleeting someone has to go out in the sleet and unfreeze the switches - and there is no pretty or automated way to do that.

You are also missing one issue: one of the points of the 55-60 retirement requirements is to clear the decks and allow more people to cycle through the jobs that pay decently. It is a deliberate counterbalance to the "winner-take-all" concept that seems to pervade society every 50 years or so (for example, right now). There were plenty of people competing to be CEO General Motors when it paid 750,000/year; there is no need for it to pay 7.5 million. The early outs force the employer to share more of that weath with more citizens.

Cranky

Drum: You are definitely full of crap on this one! Can we see a serious mea culpa?

$27,500 is not much in the New York metro area. All those 55 year olds must look for another job.

Somewhere between funny and sad.

Kevin, how would you improve working conditions? Roofs over the switching yards? (Hint: there are hundreds of acres of switching yards.) Heat the subway tunnels? (NYC has about 650 miles of track.)

And when you compare pay, compare it with other New Yorkers who are responsible for several million dollars worth of investment when they work, not to mention 300 lives or so.

25 years dealing tokens? Why, that ain't no very long time! I wonder what is the longest KD has stayed on a dead-end service job.

Things are better than they used to be. When I was young I worked with guys who pulled nets in Alaska during the Depression. I'll never forget their hands- they were massive, and their remaining fingers didn't bend- they closed on a wrench or line like a coupler on a train closes.

So, maybe today the life expectancy of a motorman isn't just 57, like it was when the age-55 rewtirement was first agreed to. And most of the workers still have all their fingers. That doesn't make it a cushy job.

I also remember a contracter telling me he lost more time due to rain in Los Angeles that he did in Seattle. Yeah, we loves us some Southern California lifestyle, but in most of the country you can't just go inside when the weather turns bad.

I would say it's too bad there isn't a national youth service corps to give people like Kevin an experience of real toil. But the fact is that young people, especially those who were raised for college, could never do the jobs the NYC transit workers do, and still keep the trains running. A "service corps" for these young people would have them pushing brooms for two years, and spending the rest of their lives cursing people who actually work, because you can't learn enough to do a real job in a few years of apprenticeship.

Well, Kevin, you pushed a few buttons with that post.

The points above about what 55 means to a transit worker and the NYC cost of living are good.

I would also like to say that I get a kick out of the position that goes: I don't support them because they have a better deal than I do. Wouldn't it be better think about how to improve your deal than to begrudge others theirs? Maybe we "professionals"--more and more a diluted, meaningless sop to our vanity--could learn a thing or two from "non-exempt" workers.

Just my $0.02 -- and all I can spare.

If I could force 7 million people to walk to work with a strike, I'd demand a hell of a lot more than retirement at 55. If I had to work under the conditions that the TWU does, I'd demand even more.

As for those who complain about luxurious government jobs - work one. When you receive your first paycheck, you'll understand why your benefits are not "excessive." They are why you take the job, not a perk of the job.

Maybe Kevin's view of retirement benefits would be a tad different if he had a job that consisted of more than sitting around in his u-trou, pounding away at the keyboard.

These workers are not all sitting in toll booths. They are laying track in dangerous, rat infested, noisy tunnels, breathing horrible pollution. They work all night in many cases, their lives on the line.

Kevin Drum disgusts me.

1) I don't think one could own a home on 55K in NYC. That means they'll have to pay rent with that pension.

2) Our economy can afford pensions like that for everyone. And we all should have them. What we can't afford is quite so large a super upper-class, whose members get their money without working at all.

3) That's 25 years at MTA, but probably 35 years working. And probably only 10 or 15 years to help raise grandchildren, do volunteer work, be active in the community in a way they don't have time for when they're working.

Ah yes, the over-generous MTA pension.

You don't mention the decade or two that the job knocks off the lives of those who take the rich pickings of that pension.

Snort.

what makes you say that the ny twu age 55 and 25 years half-pay retirement is indefensible?

how much of the average yearly earnings of the ny twu of $55,000 was overtime?

Like you, Kevin, I am both white and white-collar workers, so I will be able to retire when I'm 55 and I'll have -- unless the market crashes really badly -- at least $25,000 to live on. And like you, I find it horrifying that a minority member of the working class, one who actually works all day for a living, could have the same privilege. How am I going to maintain my superior social status if we start to provide manual laborers and other lower orders with the same kind of lifestyle you and I take for granted.

As a grad student living in upper Manhattan just a few years ago, I lived perfectly comfortably (with no dependents) on 18K a year.

Nick S - that doesn't even pass the laugh test.

And yes, Kevin, the reason you think it's 'unfair' is because you've bought into what Tom Frank calls 'market triumphalism', where the notion of workers getting a decent fucking deal out of their employers seems... well, shocking.

I think that means you ought to spend a few hours in the cold shower of priorities. It's not the MTA workers that are greedy; it's you that's deluded by decades of media-supported corporate fuck-overs.

Well fiend, I'm afraid it does. Morningside Heights, $650/month (this is 2001) to share an apartment, health insurance covered by the school, no car, nobody to take care of but myself - after taxes this leaves ~$700-$800 month to feed and clothe myself. A couple thousand people do this every year (although stipends are now ~24K.)

So..what's the big deal?..I retired at age 50 with a
pension two-thirds of my appx. 100k salary after a grueling 29 yr. career which affected my health and family. Its the "American" way... grab what you can as
we follow the example of our political and business leaders. Under the current free-for-all "owmership"
society model being imposed on our society, its time the working and middle classes to wake and join in the feeding frenzy and grab whatever they can.

> Maybe Kevin's view of retirement benefits would
> be a tad different if he had a job that consisted
> of more than sitting around in his u-trou,
> pounding away at the keyboard.

Yeah, it is amazing how this "you will work until you are 75" meme comes from economics professor types (or pundits such as Robert Samuelson of Newsweek) who sit in their book-lined offices, thinking deep thoughts, meeting with co-eds, and then heading to the gym for an environmentally controlled, doctor-monitored aerobic exercise program. Who haven't done any physical labor since they were 19, and who think that if they had to do it again at 45 that their bodies would work just as the did in their teens.

VP of Marketing, anyone? Tough work driving to downtown LA to meet with the cuties as the ad agencies, eh?

Cranky

I happen to live next to a transit worker family -- they have had terrible health problems and no timely care. In fact, the father and oldest son are now dead -- the father at sixty and the son at thrity-nine. The second son works as a driver and his mother has been frantic because they took out conductors on his line (the L). They are Norwegian Americans.

By son works for a large corporation run by a famous millionaire. All corporate employees get free admission or reduced rates to many city amenities, museums, Shakespeare in the park, and sports events. It is a corporate perk.

Bloomberg and former slum-lord Kalikow seem to care about one thing and one thing only, building new sports arenas for their pals and employees to be able to sit in luxury skyboxes, free of charge.

I don't think this line could be posted enough times:

All of you who think that the NYC workers get too much salary should apply for a job at the MTA.

It's interesting how the people who find the 55K exhorbitant then go on to a "heady" discussion.

While those who find it meager are well mostly well versed in the context.

Hell! I wouldn't apply for those transit jobs for 100k and 50yrs retiremenet! Hey, you want to work in a mine [subway] or a smog-trough [bus line] all day? Go ahead, go to it.

Wow, see what happens when you question union demands, out come the opinions, but only anecdotal facts used to support those opinions. What if both sides are wrong, what if both the MTA and the TWU are mismanaged and exagerate their grievances?

At any rate, they are in a mediation and arbitration process now and hopefully a solution is reached that doesn't result in the MTA feeling compelled to raise rates or curtail service or the TWU to punish us with slowdowns and indifference.

Well, the issue isn't whether Kevin Drum has lots of sympathy for any particular group of workers (I bet Kevin hates it when workers fight and win decent retirement benefits, immediately losing sympathy for them). The issue is whether Kevin Drum is willing to pay a market rate for the labor required to run an entire subway system and run it well. Take your sympathy, or lack thereof, and stick it up yer ---.

That $55,000 average salary figure for New York City transit workers is a bit misleading.

The base salaries are lower. The $55,000 average is hit by working a shitload of overtime.

Nonetheless, Mayor Moneybags and Governor Bagman and the the corporate-owned media love to throw around that average salary figure and note how the TWU workers aren't college-educated, or terribly hard-working, yet they are making good money.

My grandfather was a track worker. I currently teach high school and some of my students' mothers and fathers work for the MTA. A friend of mine from high school works for the MTA

I have some familiarity with who these people are and how hard they work for the money they make. And I am sick of rich fucks like Michael "Union-Busting" Bloomberg or Mort "Ugly Labor Relations" Zuckerman tarring the TWU rank-and-file as lazy, overpaid, good-for-nothing, ne'er-do-wells who are basically living off the public trough like bloodsuckers.

Boy it certainly took a while for this comments thread to wise up. Physical work in freezing/steaming tunnels is not a desk job, and it's appalling how easily deskbound white collar workers forget that. Remember August in NYC? Think it's any cooler in the tunnels? How about January? Think it's any warmer?

A lifetime of physical work NOT performed in the great outdoors will not harden your body and help you to outlive Carpathian Mountain urine drinkers — it will break your body down and kill you!

Yes old farmers live forever (depending on which chemicals they used), but old factory workers certainly don't, and I doubt very much transit workers live any longer than railroad workers, who aren't exactly known for their longevity.

The naivete of the comfortable class is astonishing at times.

what's with the class warfare, Kevin? Not very progressive of you.

Who said they have to live on a 55K a year pay check?
Like most family if both spouse work they make between 75K to more than 100K a year. Hardly below the poverty level!!!
Then no one is obliged to retire at 55 and get a 27K check. This is a nice option. You can change job, get a full pay check and add it to your pension.
For whatever reason, MTA workers, teachers, firemen can claim their job deverve more benefit than the average joe. This is called corporation lobbying. Stop the crap. This isno more 19th century jobs.

It is no 'anecdote' about Bloomberg, Kalikow and stadium-building mania of the real-estate oligarchy that runs New York. Nor the free tickets for the corporate class. It is no anecdote about the quality of health care for blue collar workers.

It no 'anecdote' that the working environment of transit workers sucks. If you think it is an 'anecdote' why don't you take a little walk beside the third rail?

It is an 'anecdote' -- or rather an urban legend -- that these workers have an 'indefensibly' great deal.

Kill The Rich.

Some companies shield executives from taxes
Some companies shield executives from taxes
Thursday, December 22, 2005

By Mark Maremont, The Wall Street Journal

Like most Americans, rank-and-file employees of Home Depot Inc. must reach into their own pockets to pay taxes.

But not Robert Nardelli, the home-improvement retailer's chief executive. Under his employment contract, Home Depot picks up a big chunk of his federal and state income taxes. Specifically, the company is obliged to reimburse its CEO for taxes due on a slew of perks, including a high-end luxury car, his family's travel on Home Depot jets and forgiveness of a $10 million loan. Last year, these payments amounted to at least $3.3 million, topping Mr. Nardelli's $2 million base salary.

Amid soaring CEO compensation, a number of companies are paying extra sums to cover executives' personal tax bills. Many companies are paying taxes due on core elements of executive pay, such as stock grants, signing bonuses and severance packages. Others are reimbursing taxes on corporate perquisites, which are treated as income by the Internal Revenue Service. They run the gamut from personal travel aboard corporate jets to country-club memberships and shopping excursions.

"This smacks of Leona Helmsley-like treatment, that only little people pay taxes," says Patrick McGurn, an executive vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., an influential adviser to big investors that often critiques companies' corporate-governance practices. For these top executives, he says, companies "are removing taxes from the list of inevitable life experiences, leaving only death."

Details of the little-known payments, called "tax gross-ups," are often buried in impenetrable footnotes or obscure filings. In its 2005 proxy statement, Home Depot didn't disclose many of the perks it must give Mr. Nardelli, or that the company is required to reimburse him for taxes related to those perks. The company provided specifics of these benefits and the gross-ups in his employment agreement, which was attached to a 2001 regulatory filing...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05356/626535.stm

eat them, too. Yum!

Posted by: DH in DC on December 24, 2005 at 1:29 AM

You neglected to mention in addition to FERS "pension," Federal employees also get Social Security. Sure must be nice to be a Fed. employee these days. Especially compared to those of us without any pensions or 401K because we are "self-employed." Since we the tax-payers foot the bucks for those FERS contributions, why doesn't every taxpayer get that deal?

Perhaps someone above has already pointed this out...

If $55k is the average employee salary, wouldn't we expect that senior employees near retirement age actually make significantly more than that?

Nick S. your example is ridiculous. You only accepted to live at that wage -- like I did myself when in graduate school -- because you were in graduate school. You were not supposed to do that for life, and you were probably counting the days until you could get your 50k or 100k salary upon graduation.

Would you do it again, now? Remember you said you had then a comfortable life. So why not to go back to that?

It is no 'anecdote' about Bloomberg, Kalikow and stadium-building mania of the real-estate oligarchy that runs New York. Nor the free tickets for the corporate class. It is no anecdote about the quality of health care for blue collar workers.

It no 'anecdote' that the working environment of transit workers sucks. If you think it is an 'anecdote' why don't you ubermenschen try taking a little 3-mile walk alongside the third rail, or is that only for untermenschen?

It is an 'anecdote' -- or rather an urban legend -- that these workers have an 'indefensibly' great deal.

"basically living off the public trough like bloodsuckers. "

That ain't the American working man.

We all know who the blood suckers living off the public trough are. They live well, too, and that ain't most of us.

Regarding the University of California's pension plan (UCRP):

I am a UC employee and have been since I was 21, right out of college. (I am now 35.) Based on my calulations in my own personal situation, I will need 42 years of service in order to retire with a full pension at age 63 and I will have full health benefits (meaning I'll pay the same premiums and copays as an active UC employee pays) after 20 years service.

It sounds generous, but keep this in mind: UCRP is so well managed and has had such good returns that it has not required employer or employee contributions since 1991. It has been funded entirely by returns on its investments since then. This includes paying benefits and accouting for the promised benefits of current employees. (Employee contributions, which are about 2%, have been going into a personal account similar to our 403(b) during this time.)

So it's possible to run a public retirement plan that doesn't drain money from the public coffers.

By this point, many if not most California municipal and state employees have even sweeter pension deals, with great heapings of new sugar added by Gray Davis and the Legislature under his administration.

But don't let that color views of Schwarzenegger or anything.

"This smacks of Leona Helmsley-like treatment, that only little people pay taxes," says Patrick McGurn, an executive vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., an influential adviser to big investors that often critiques companies' corporate-governance practices. For these top executives, he says, companies "are removing taxes from the list of inevitable life experiences, leaving only death."

Only the little people pay taxes and they have no need for repeal of the inheritance tax, either.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05356/626535.stm

> Remember August in NYC? Think it's
> any cooler in the tunnels?

I haven't worked in NYC transit tunnels, but I have worked in other underground locations, and that is part of the problem: on a hot day it is 55 deg and damp in the tunnels. Then you come out into the 95 deg and humid for 10 minutes. Then you go back to the 55 and damp. Then the 95 and humid...

Can you say environmental arthritis? I thought you could.

Cranky

I worked in a maintenance shop at a Gary IN steel mill, similar to working in a shop for the transit system. After twenty five years of hugging cold steel in the winter (shop is not unheated but pretty damn close to it) and dusty sweat in the summer (definately no AC) retirement is a blessing. You want steel to frame your building, you want someone to transport your ass to a downtown job, you want you desk and chair and electricity etc., then pay the working people a living wage and give them a decent retirement!
Wouldn't it be a nice world for you middle class idiots if those workers would just do their job and go away.

Kill everyone with an MBA and teach business at trade schools where it belongs, not major teaching institutions, and pay these little twerps what they are worth, which ain't much. They produce nothing and buy up all my favorite cigars, and they aren't even funny.

These folks make "$55K" because they negotiated that pay rate as part of their total compensation package. Pensions, retirement age and medical benefits are part of the package. Jerking the pension benefit would require an improvement somewhere else to stay "even".

Did I miss the part where the offsetting improvement was described?

This is happening wherever organized labor tries to keep what they've negotiated over the years. As an airline pilot, I've taken a 45 percent pay cut in the last 12 months.

I'm going to lose my pension because my company underfunded it by 5.8 BILLION dollars. The PBGC thinks that $28K is plenty of pension for pilots, who are required to retire at age 60--which is "early" by their standards. Thanks.

My medical benefits now eat up $500 a month, with high deductibles and high copays. My company has announced that I'm still over compensated and need to give up more.

American Airlines pilots, who gave up huge pay cuts after 9/11,-with no raises since- are now the the highest paid in the industry. Guess what? They're getting ready to take more cuts so that they can establish a new bottom for us to strive for.

So where does it end? Mesaba airlines is now proposing to pay its First Officers a salary below federal poverty guidelines for a family of four. In a few years, expect the forecasts in the skies and tunnels of this country to include regular aluminum showers.

I think I'll go drive a garbage truck. At least I'll be home every night.

'Anecdote' -- Federal workers' taxes and healthcare is fully funded by taxpayers.

Fact -- Federal workers contribute half of their own pension and healthcare costs through deductions from their salaries.

By this point, many if not most California municipal and state employees have even sweeter pension deals, with great heapings of new sugar added by Gray Davis and the Legislature under his administration.

But don't let that color views of Schwarzenegger or anything.

Posted by: trotsky on December 24, 2005 at 10:24

And if those people are lucky enough to be able to retire here in CA, they will benefit from Prop. 13, Jarvis-Gann, which killed this state. Most can't afford it. Only the truly wealthy can afford states like CA, in the bay area, Seattle, in WA, or NYC in New York. You are full of shit, and stop using my name.

The real bottom line is not the $55k/year number, but the total cost of all compensation, including the pension. Without this there is no basis for comparing the cost of employing transit workers. Neither the NYT nor anyone above has addressed this. Anyone have an answer?

Does anybody know whether MTA employees even get Social Security? Whether they do or not doesn't affect my own views, but it's interesting that Kevin Drum never stopped to ponder the fact that many government employees don't even receive Social Security.

For some more perspective, the average 2004 Christmas bonus among New York City's 158,000 Wall Street workers was $100,600. The 2005 Goldman Sachs mean is a cool $500,000.

Kevin Drum is working on his next blog post about these indefensible Christmas bonuses. (Right, Kevin?)

basically it boils down to a privileged academic living a cloistered life opining on something he has not a fucking clue about. for a better insight into the class, race and economic issues of the strike, i highly recommend steve gilliard, who has written informed and passionately about this:

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/

Point 1: It's understandable that someone who's lived on the other side of the continent most of his life might not have the value of money in NYC right at his fingertips, but that's why it's not a good idea to react to a dollar number if you don't know the context. Instead I recommend the opposite strategy: follow the money-followers. If working for the MTA is such a sweet deal, how come the white folks aren't queueing up to apply for jobs there? How come there are so many black and hispanic faces in the union? Could it be that a comfortable white Californian hasn't got as good a grasp on the facts as he thinks?

Point 2: The union workers are being called "selfish". I don't get how anybody comes to that conclusion, when they are striking for members who haven't yet joined them! Hint: if they were really selfish, they could agree to let new hires be taken on without a pension, and keep theirs.

Point 3: What is all this crap about wishing unions would accept every deal management offers them, anyway? If that's such a good idea, why doesn't management accept any deal unions offer them, eh? Why don't the Republicans accept any deal the Democrats offer them? And why don't defense attorneys and prosecuting attorneys "work together" for the sake of harmony in the law, instead of this adversarial stuff? Why is an adversarial system good enough for your legislature, and good enough for your courts, but not good enough for your corporations? Did Gordon Gecko die in vain, or is "Greed Is Good! Greed Works!" only a rule to be observed when the greedy ones are stockbrokers, and not the drivers who take them to the Stock Exchange?

I once wrote in my Devil's Dictionary...

ACADEME, n.
An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

ACADEMY, n.
[from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.

Today I would amend that to...

ACADEME, n.
An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

ACADEMY, n.
[from ACADEME] A modern school where *business* is taught.

Yes, and all the universities are bastions of liberal bias and thought...

not one soul in all of this conserversation has mentioned the largest union in the world and how it affects everyone , no matter where you live work , or what is the description of the work that entitles you to a pay check an/ or a retirement. ( IT IS CALLED THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ) THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE IS IN EVERY CITY , TOWN AND HAMLET NO MATTER HOW LARGE OR SMALL.
AS FOR YOUR UNION REPS THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BE IN THE SAME BOAT WITH YOU IF YOU STAY ON STRIKE FOR FORTY YEARS---THEY WILL GET THEIR PAY CHECK AND HAVE A NICE TIME SO HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM GRANNY SMITH APPLES.
THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE WHO IS HAVING
A HELL OF A TOUGHER TIME THAN YOU. THE HOWLER MONKEY

I support the privatization of the courts.

All the union reps are corrupt...

Libertarians invented outrage over government and/or union waste, bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.

I support the privatization of the courts as well. I can afford it.

This isno more 19th century jobs.

Um, if anything defines a "19th century job," it would have to be a train worker.

Oh, and Kevin? Merry Christmas to you, too.

Kevin: At 55, $27,500 pension after twenty-five years of breathing dust, smoke, smog (surely reducing the life expectancy)- and you are critical? What's wrong with you? Please, save your indignation for the retirement plans of corporate executives.

It seems that a lot of people are overlooking the societal value of pensions. No, they're not primarily designed for old codgers to move to Arizona and have money enough to golf all day. They're a recognition of the fact that after a certain age, most people are simply not physically able to handle the rigor of working for a living. (And I should note here that this is a big picture comment. I'm not really interested of hearing about your Uncle Charlie, who worked until he fell over dead at 112.) Pensions are a way of taking care of society's older population. An alternative that we're currently barreling toward is the return of rampant poverty among the elderly. If you like the idea of old people eating cat food to survive, then, sure, consider pensions a "gift" that lazy workers really don't deserve. If you've got a better way of handling the older population, then, for the love of god, push for that. Until then, I don't really care if a small minority of people designed their lives to double dip from a variety of pensions (and were lucky enough to stay healthy long enough to pull it off). Paying people enough of a wage that an employer can defer some of it to handle the likelihood that many people will not be able to work until they die seems to me a reasonable expectation of any country that dares to consider itself civilized.

All the primates need to unionize, now!

In this season of "It's A Wonderful Life" it's distressing to read this pro-Mr. Potter diatribe on one of my favorite sites.

I'm one to believe in 'trickle up' economics-why not have everyone who works for wages make more?

Kevin:

I love your blog, but if we are going to expect the likes of lowly Tbrosz to back up his arguments and be accountable when he says something inane (which is ALL THE TIME), we expect the same from you.

You've been pushed back on a few key empirical points where you were rather glib:

Median salary in NYC. You were shown to have underestimated this - TWU members earn well less than the median.

Health and working conditions: EXTREMELY difficult to change, and - even if the union makes progress, the costs will possibly be as much of a "burden" to the employer as is the pension. There are many jobs which are simply dangerous and unhealthy, and while these conditions can be mitigated, they cannot be eliminated. And the improvements that have generally occurred in work such as this have been the result of efforts by the TWU!

This leaves a key matter of of principle:

That retirement at 55 with 25 years of service at $27K is "indefensible."

Indefensible is a pretty strong word.

What would be more "defensible" in your estimate?

TWU members should work longer than 25 years before receiving a pension;
They should receive less than half-pay when they do retire.

There are a number of variants here - you might feel comfortable (I don't) extending the retirment age and paying less than $27K; or Kevin, you might feel comfortable eliminating pensions alltogether.

So what do you stand for?

A few key principles:

Pensions are deferred compensation, not a bonus conferred by the boss.

They generally help stabilize the workforce (keeping skills in-house, which in Transit is a good thing), and increase workers' long-term commitment to the job.

A decent society provides for peoples' retirement, and given the limitations and possible (probably?) roll-back of social security (and given the impossibility of generating a proper national pension system), private sector arrangements like this are a bulwark against old-age poverty.

You've written critically in the past about the "conservative assault on labor," and about the many roll-backs in workers' benefits. Well, how does your argument about pensions differ from those on the corporate right you've previously criticized?

Brother Drum - which side are you on?

> Pensions are a way of taking care of society's
> older population.

They are also an incentive for people age 20-50 to work harder, knowing they will have some security as they approach old age. This little trick was discovered by that arch-liberal, Otto von Bismark, and copied by Hopkins and FDR (40 years later).

Cranky

In this season of "It's A Wonderful Life" it's distressing to read this pro-Mr. Potter diatribe on one of my favorite sites.

I'm one to believe in 'trickle up' economics-why not have everyone who works for wages make more?

> TWU members should work longer than 25
> years before receiving a pension;

The physical labor company I used to work for handled this by transferring people to indoor/light duty/experienced-based jobs as they reached 50-55, so they kept contributing to 62 or 65.

The new CEO, whose compensation is 100x (yes, that is 100 times) that of the dude he replaced, outsourced all those indoor jobs to India. Good deal, eh? Too bad the stock price hasn't actually gone up yet.

Cranky

Train operators complain about the fear of driving through tunnels filled with debris; female workers recently went public with descriptions of the rusted, filthy, freezing bathrooms provided for them.
Few riders know, for instance, that transit workers have to ask for a day off 30 days in advance. Back in October, in an annual ritual, some MTA workers slept on cots in bus depots so they could be first on line the next morning to ask for permission to take Thanksgiving off.

The Soviets had a beautiful underground system in Moscow, once...

Not sure what it is like today.

http://www.moscow-taxi.com/sightseeing/metro.html

I've never been to Britain, what's the Metro like there?

There has been an absoulte explosion is the compensation of CEO's and other high level executives in this country. Unless we look at ordinary workers pay is that context, I think we miss the point.

A few years ago the idiots in Albany (I'm talking to you Sheldon Silver) abolished the commuter tax to NYC, which brought in 500MM a year (at a modest cost to commuters), but 25 times the amount to fund the first year of pensions for transit workers. So the bitching and moaning from commuters, and Orange County commentators rings particularly hollow.

Don't people realize that this is all part of a private/public sector plan to get cheaper and cheaper labor, at the same time that, e.g., executives are getting compensation packages that enable them to avoid taxes entirely?

What complete bullshit!

W O W ! ! !

Kevin is getting hammered on this one. It has been a long, long time since you had this many readers this vociferously vocal.

I worked with my hands for far too long, not to side with the transit workers or any other union for that matter.

What say, Kevin. Speak up, my lad. :-)

This is not an unreasonable deal.

55K is not that much to make, and 27.5k is not that much to sustain you for retirement. Given the potential life time revenue the average empolyee generates for the company, this is not out of the quesion.

25*55k=1375k while working Max
50*27.5=1375 while retired. Max

now what is the cost of living for those 75 years
75*30 = 2250. Distributed not so evenly

Does the 25 year career generate more than 2.7 million for the company? More than likely.

And this is the top end of the distribution.

The would-be Ubermenschen sit in their luxury skyboxes, paid for with tax givaways and build on land seized from small homeowners and shopkeepers by eminent domain and imagine they and their cronies and hangers-on from the PR industry -- oops, I mean the press --- that they are all regular blue-collar working joes.

Well fiend, I'm afraid it does. Morningside Heights, $650/month (this is 2001) to share an apartment, health insurance covered by the school, no car, nobody to take care of but myself - after taxes this leaves ~$700-$800 month to feed and clothe myself. A couple thousand people do this every year (although stipends are now ~24K.)

right, health insurance covered by the school.

Groucho Marx,

Excellent point about MBAs - Mark McCormick, who mastered the Sports Management system and made Arnold Palmer a small fortune, absolutely hated the MBA system. He felt that one of the drawbacks was that the MBAers never worked "the line".

To whom it may concern above, when does a Federal Employee receive SS checks?

And for anyone begrudging the Longshoremen, listen to old timers tell about their fathers and uncles who had to go aboard a ship and never come off until it was fully unloaded, no matter if they had to "sleep" curled up in a hold aboard.

Kevin, take time off from your white collar job and spend time getting your hands dirty with laborers.

I am heartened by the almost uniform denunciation of Kevin's callous characterization of transit workers' retirement benefits as too generous.

this is a good group.

I was going to say that I would love to be a fly on the wall at Camp David when Bush reads this in Barron's, then I realized that the NSA has a better view and I don't think flies have ears. I guess even MBAs like their privacy.

From Atrios:

Impeachment

Some communist rag called Barron's says it's time to consider impeachment. (via barry)
AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.

(...)

Surely the "strict constructionists" on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary eventually will point out what a stretch this is. The most important presidential responsibility under Article II is that he must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes following the requirements of laws that limit executive power. There's not much fidelity in an executive who debates and lobbies Congress to shape a law to his liking and then goes beyond its writ.

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.

Some ancillary responsibility, however, must be attached to those members of the House and Senate who were informed, inadequately, about the wiretapping and did nothing to regulate it. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, told Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 that he was "unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities." But the senator was so respectful of the administration's injunction of secrecy that he wrote it out in longhand rather than give it to someone to type. Only last week, after the cat was out of the bag, did he do what he should have done in 2003 -- make his misgivings public and demand more information.

Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.

Gee, Kevin Drum, the Revolution may be closer than I thought.

If I were you, I'd pick a side now.

So, I have friends (surprisingly) who are tough guy Republicans who complain about unions, health insurance, taxes, other people's work habits and pay, ya know, nobody works hard enough for them, and when I say I hope they turn down their Medicare benefits when the doctor finds that large, expensive mass at an advanced age, they retort that they are going to live that long anyway.

I usually ask why don't they die right now, because they are breathing my oxygen and besides, when they croak soon, may I have that piece of chicken on their plate?

Republicans like slaves. Kevin merely wants servants.

Just how out of touch are you with average working people? Retiring at age 55 on HALF your $55K/year salary? That's about $27K/year. Wow. You try living on that anywhere in the NY-Tristate area. But I supposed you think they should uproot themselves and move some place cheaper, i.e., get out of the way.

Is it any wonder the democratic leadership gets called "elitist?"

Not too many Federal retirees are getting SS checks. Feds didn't start paying into SS until 1984.

Point 4: (continued from above) as Atrios points out, the pensions arrangement often is the result of a union settling for a deal offered by the management: it's cheaper for the management than the pay rise the union would prefer.

But Merry Christmas anyway, Kevin. You may be wrong, but as I've said before, kudos to you for putting your opinions out there and being willing to take a pasting every now and again.

Jorgy Festrunk writes, "I've never been to Britain, what's the Metro like there"?

Not bad. Unless you have brown skin, live in a building with suspected terrorists, and break into a relaxed trot to make your train.

Then they hold you down while they pop off 5 in your head.

Workers making too much money? Pensions too big?

Kevin, the conservative think tanks--the Manhattan Institute,etc., have gotten your ear.

Blue collar workers wages have not kept pace with inflation--in fact, wage workers, are worse off now than when Bush came into office.

So the average transit union worker in NYC makes 55,000/year with overtime included--a lot of money to live in NYC? Try it. And after 25 years of work retires with a pension of 25,000. Too much you say?

Save the scroogisms for billionaire mayor Bloomberg, the corporate CEO's and tax cuts for the rich crowd.

See the conservative vista your are enabling: the free market economy will make everyone an economic winner but in fact creates a rich ruling class that the rest of us poor slobs belabor under.

Our friend Eschaton also make worthwhile comments:

Kev,
You really need to learn a little about how defined benefit plans are funded before showing your ignorance in a post. Generally, employee and employer contributions are determined based on actuarial studies which take into account estimates of how many will retire at various ages.These kinds of pension systems work very well if the actuarial assumptions are reasonable. It's a pretty fair deal between employee and employer. Very cute of you to call it indefensible while appearing to know virtually zip about pension systems. I suggest that in the future you do your homework before making such pejorative remarks - or move on over to the National Review or some such where such ignorance is more expected.

Damn Kevin, makes me wonder if you know what a loaf of bread costs or how much a gallon of unleaded costs.

You sir, are not the man I thought you were.

"The naivete of the comfortable class is astonishing at times."

And that about sums it up for me as well, well said and well deserved for your comments Kevin.

com'on steve

i thought you of all people would pick up on how the chamber of commerce involves small business right up to the corporate c e o office to put it to the average working ass hole . any comment , cat got your tounge ?
HOWLER MONKEY

As I recall Kevin thought invading Iraq was a good idea too....

Hey Kevin Drum, you dolt, did you know that here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania state workers with 30 years of service can retire at age 60 at 75% of their final average salary!?

That must positively drive you bananas...right?

Should I feel guilty?

Well, I don't, and neither should anybody else who is in line to receive a decent pension. What's sad is that this sort of thing is not more widespread. I'm sorry to disappoint you that we won't be dining on cat food after I retire.

I'd like to add that the Penna. state employee pension fund is fully funded. I contribute to my retirement as does the state. No one is getting ripped off here. What can we expect next from Mr. Drum?: "...are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

Seems to me we need to re-think providing pensions and other benefits to really unproductive "civil servants" like officers in the military and people in Congress, who milk the public teat for all it's worth and contribute zilch to a productive, peaceful society.

And when we find abominations like Duke Cunningham - to the gallows they go...

Harold said it well up-thread, but tere is a real myth about federal workers getting it too easy. One of my favorite people has been working for almost 40-years as a GS-5, pays her own health insurance, and makes almost 30K a year and had to declare bankruptcy to help with health care for her mother who recently died. She will retire in a few years and get 75% of a salary that was ridiculously low her working life, to which she contributed her youth, money and energy. She was able to buy a used truck last week for $500. Whoo Hoo. Federal workers--gravy train, huh? They pay a lot for health care too unless they are congress-people.

Hmm. Retiring at 55 on a 20k pension in NYC.

That kind of money won't even get you a storm grate to sleep on in NYC any more.

Must be pretty easy to decide what people in NYC can or can't live on out there in California, eh, Kevin?

Fifty percent of $55K = $27,500. That works out to 2,267.00 per month before taxes. That is not generous, dammit!

The status quo isn't always reasonable, and retirement at age 55 with only 25 years of service seems hard to defend.

Policemen and firefighters and the military can retire, generally, after only twenty years of service, which for many of them is at age 40 or thereabouts. I find it odd that this opprobrium is reserved for transit workers while letting those other public sector jobs slide. Do you find cops and firefighters and soldiers hard to defend too? Should they have to wait until 65 to start drawing a pension?

Guys, guys. The class warfare here is interesting - by that I mean the blue collar warfare against academia. All the little snide comments about professors sitting in the ivory tower. Well, I certainly agree that running a train in NYC is a tough job and those workers suffer and deserve better conditions. But the notion that most college professors are part of the privileged economic class is just hilarious.

Median salary for a starting professor in most places would be in the low $30s and remember, you don’t get to start that job out of a B.S. degree but you’ve had to go in hock in grad school for some years first. And in many places you never get above $45k by the time you retire 40 years later. Yes, the job has its compensations, and a few professors do make 90-110K or more, but to equate the mass of them with corporate CEOs is part of that anti-intellectual bias from the working class that does the working class no good. Oh, and universities are also turning to part-timers to avoid paying benefits as well.

We all know the real enemy is that use of the “selfish” argument which we accept when applied to all workers except senior execs. When someone attempt to apply it to senior execs, then its “well, they created all the jobs for you, so shut up.” How anyone thinks a track worker is “selfish” for wanting a heated, clean bathroom is beyond me.

So let’s focus on the real enemies of transit workers.

Right on Kevin - New York Hates the TWU now. I can't believe there are this many old-style socialists on this comments board. Absolutely hysterical. "Hard labor"??? Are you friggin kidding me? Are we talking about the same guys here? The guys in the glass cage that sit on their asses all day long alternatively dozing off and dispensing gruff "advice" to tourists? Yeah, that's gotta really wear you out.

And by the way, most highly paid people in New York live in Manhattan where rents are the highest. It was not all that hard on us during the strike. Taxis pretty much did the job. I had no problems getting to work from my pad in SoHo. And the big I-banks hired private transportation for their people. The stock exchange had no problems at all. The people who were inconvenienced by the TWU's little tantrum (it was about "respect" remember?) were people who were significantly worse off than the overpaid TWU guys with their goldplated benefits.

There's a word for people who buy into Roger "Rosa Parks" Touissant's class warfare rhetoric: SUCKERS.

It's clear that Kevin did not think and research enough before writing this post.

All he had to do was to look at the CSU retirement benefits. If I remember right his dad was on the faculty at one of the CSU campuses.

All the little snide comments about professors sitting in the ivory tower.

I counted exactly one comment criticizing professors in this thread-- specifically, economic professors claiming that the solution to retirement woes is for everyone to work until they are 75. That criticism seemed warranted to me... particularly since many tenured professors get the same deal as transit workers-- defined benefit pension after X years of loyal service to the university.

They trade off increased wages for better pension benefits when they negotiatie the contract.

It takes a special kind of asshole to bitch about that, having never done their jobs and not being someone who does outdoor work, day after day, heat and freezing cold.

But it wouldn't matter if they were the Featherbedders Union, they traded off wage increases for pension increases in their negotiations and now Kevin Drum wants a place at the bargaining table… Og, excuse me, he just wants to play stupid.

Nice post, Drum.

In an earlier post added to by Harold:

'Anecdote' -- Federal workers' taxes and healthcare is fully funded by taxpayers.

Fact -- Federal workers contribute half of their own pension and healthcare costs through deductions from their salaries.

*** Here are the facts:

Federal Pensions:

CSRS pension (hired before 1983). Worker contributes half. Eligble to retire at 55 with
30 years of service at

College professors get free college tuition for all their children -- and not a few have more than two. That is no small perk with college tuiton at 40k a year.

And the poster who claims that NYC hates the transit union is a liar (and a racist).

College professors get free college tuition for all their children

Not universally true. In many cases, it's only free tuition for the college that the professor actually teaches at. Some universities give a better deal, covering tuition at any other university. The reason for this, of course, is the same as why public sector jobs have more secure health and retirement benefits-- because the professors are giving up better salaries they could have in the private sector in exchange for teaching and doing research at a university.

Following up my previous comment, in public universities, you can imagine the public outcry if it turned out that taxpayer dollars were paying for the private college tuition of professors' children ("How DARE a mere teacher receive a benefit that I don't get out of MY taxes?!"). In private universities, the system of benefits usually works like this-- the larger the endowment and better the reputation of the university, the fewer fringe benefits it has to dole out to professors in order to attract top talent, so some of these fringe benefits disappear at the top, as well.

That's the old European peasant attitude as adapted by modern Republicans. God put you in your place, so you can't envy the aristocrats, or the people who make 100 times as much as you do, but you can envy the guy with TWO cows, or a better pension plan.

Actually, good pensions make better demographic and economic sense when look at the big picture. As the ratio of retirees to workers rises, worker productivity will soar. Most work nowadays is extremely inefficient. Low salaries and high subsidies don't make optimizing and automating service work worthwhile.

Sure, the transition will upset some people. It's much easier to fire strikers and retrain your work force than redesigning your work structure. The United States was built on high wages and capital formation to leverage labor. We do not HAVE to rebuild it in the model of medieval Europe.

Brilliant Harold. You just call anyone who disagrees with you or critizises Roger Touissant a racist. (He did in fact compare himself with Rosa Parks - and MLK too, you tool). Way to go. It's this kind of argument that has done so much to move the causes of the left forward.

Yeah, that's definitely what's caused the right-wing ascendancy: rude liberals.

Just to clarify, my posts on UC and CSU retirement benefits were in no way meant to begrudge the pensions that the Professors in these universities get. In any case, I would assume that a large percentage of retirees in these systems are not even academics.

But the notion that most college professors are part of the privileged economic class is just hilarious.

'Privileged?' No.

'Subject to massive societal blind spots?' Apparently.

That doesn't necessarity make them bad people. But as someone upthread suggested, it does reveal a degree of elitism.

Calling people racist for critizising Roger Touissant is in fact rude, Patrick. You identified that correctly. But that's not the problem. The problem with people like Harold is that they're stupid and are not convincing anyone.

Lost in the rush to prove that Kevin is insensitive to the common man's plight is his point, which is that we need to be aware that there is a backlash building out there.

At some point a lot of 70 year old people with no pensions are going to be asking retired 55 year old former policemen if they want fries with that. There is going to be a huge gap in senior lifestyle between the pensioned and the unpensioned that could not have been predicted on career day when we decided what we wanted to be when we grew up. Back then the public sector was playing catch up with private pensions, and we talked about the 30 hour work week for everyone. There were a lot of promises that went unfilled.

For example, I'm still waiting for my jetpack.

But the race-to-the-bottom, screw-them-I've-got-mine attitude on either side won't make it easy to have a conversation about fairness.

And before anybody asks, I'm a 50 year old that used to have a sit-down job but now does physical work.

And what exactly is your cause, Mr. Ubermensch? And does calling people "selfish thugs" when they resist rollbacks do a lot to move it forward?

OK, you say New Yorkers "hate the TWU"? I challenge you to back that statement up with facts.

I heard the representative for the MTA get on NPR and give away the ubermensch/untermensch game by saying that there were lots of immigrants waiting in the wings who would be happy to have the transit workers' jobs.

I am a three generation New Yorker (all b. Manhattan and now living in the Boroughs). My Sig O walked 12 miles to work and back and we support Roger Toussaint and think the comparison to Rosa Parks is not misplaced.

Nice comment Jim - this is exactly the point. Harold says it's wrong NYers hate the TWU. I guess it depends on who you ask. But how do you think they will feel when they're working away at 70-75 to pay the pension of Roger Touissant in Florida?

That comment really says it all, Harold. "we support Roger Toussaint and think the comparison to Rosa Parks is not misplaced."

That is HILL-ARIOUS. Roger Touissant just shut down our subway system about a few percentage points on future hires salaries. Oh yeah. Totally comparable to segregation. Totally. Idiot.

You're a real dunce, Drum.

Kevin, my dad retired at age 55 at some 70 or 80% of salary. He was a teacher at a public school in NY state and he was making around $90K (after some 30+ years on the job) when he retired. He also had a stroke at age 50 and a heart attack at age 61, so I don't feel like his retirement was a stigma so much as damned common sense.

My BIL is NYPD, and I don't remember the details, but I think he's got a few more (less than 10) years before retirement with a generous pension. He's under 40 now. I look forward to asking himhis feelings on the transit strike tomorrow. He's PBA, and I wonder if he sees the city's trying to play hardball with the transit union as a bad sign for future police negotiations with the city.

$55,000 per year sounds great. However, half pay at retirement equals an amount of $27,500. Not really a generous sum.
Re: >
Many defined plans do not include the overtime earned when calculating retirement payouts.
IMHO, $27,500 is close to the poverty level.

No, Jim 7, it's not a "backlash", this is the same old that it ever was. A backlash would have to be something new. Plus, the people asking "do you want fries" are going to *be* those "retired" people. $27K is not something you can build a life of leisure on.

Regarding federal pension comments above,

"And the number of people who double dip-- i.e., take retirement from the gov or the military and then come back and work as consultants, often making more as consultants than they ever did as employees, is astounding."

Often making more as consultantants than they ever did as employees...

Hmmm, I wonder why? Perhaps they were "underpaid" when measured by salary. Perhaps there really is something to the thought that pension is deferred salary?

Kevin, I think you're gonna need a big time, "I screwed up and commented before I ran the numbers" placed up as another post, not just as an item in the comments.

Specifically, address the purchasing power of the pension, the number of years the employee can expect to collect (retire at 55 die at 57 is not such a deal if you pay into the pension for 25 years). Then just apologize and work to get national health insurance so that this part can be removed from the 'pension' discussion.

Kevin has his ass handed to him on a platter....

Why, he almost sounds like the "entitlement boy" (our dear Prez) himself....

If it is "just a few percentage points of future hires' salaries" they why on earth should Jackoff and Jim mind so much working to pay for it?
"It depends on who you ask."

Yeah, if you ask people who live in Jersey and Long Island they don't support Toussaint, but are they New Yorkers?

We New Yorkers who support the TWU happen to take the train every day and we understand that better conditions for the workers mean safer and better rides for the passengers.

I mind much more working to pay for the skyboxes of Kenneth Lay and Peter Kalikow.

I would really like to know where Jackoff and Jim live and whether and how often they take public transport.

College professors get free college tuition for all their children

Not at teh vast majority of publicly funded universities, including the three where I have taught. Wives and children at my university get no break at all even when they take courses here.

Salaries of college professors (at start) range from low 30s to mid 80s depending on the discipline ans the type of university. In those disciplines where there is a private sector alternative, professors would make more in the private sector. The compensating factor is that there is sometimes more job security in the academic position if one gets tenure.

faculty in science and engineering tend to work very long hours to stay in the game.

It is a great job, I am well paid, have a good life. I am not trying in any way to whine or complain. I am a molecular biologist. Just to get some stuff out on the table, it is worth noting that the youngest Assistant Professors in my department are in their late thirties and early fourties, having worked for salaries in the 20s-40s until then. Quite a few will be out of this job in 6 years when they are denied tenure for not getting grants in the curren environment.

Does anyone know what the actual mean and median pension benefits for transit retirees are? The mean average salary might be $55,000, but what are the mean and median salaries on the date of retirement, and by extension the resulting pensions?

Harold, I already told you, SoHo. Are you illiterate as well as stupid? I take the subway every day. And i have a brain so I don't think my subway ride will be any "safer" if the guy in the glass box that does who knows what can retire at 55.

The money extorted by the TWU for their excessive benefits comes from New Yorkers, not Ken Lay (what the hell does he have to do with the New York subway???)

This is the best you've got??? Pathetic.

Ed Fitzgerald, your information sux!
"Overall, New York City is two-times as expensive as any other city in the United States." The literal meaning of this sentence is that NY is twice as expensive as the 2nd most expensive city. I don't think so! Your index of 179.9 would indicate it was only 80% more expensive than the average in the US.

"The median income of a New York is $60,765, $10,000 more than the national median." You seem to treat this as the median income of individuals (but you are very unclear). This is more likely the median HOUSEHOLD income. I don't know about NY, but I can tell you the median income for US workers is NOT $50,000. When I started making $50K, I found out I was in the top 20% of earners. $50K is much closer to the median household income. Last time I checked (a few years ago), the median income for individuals was in the upper $30Ks. I have heard the average income on Manhattan is in the low $70Ks, but that's not the median and is skewed by all the super rich. I'm sure the median is lower, and other boroughs' medians are lower still.

I agree with the Kevin bashers. Depending on the job, 55 may not be such an early age to retire, and most of those people are going to have to get minimum wage, low skill jobs to bump their measly $27K pension up to a livable income, if that is possible in NY. I doubt there are many who can afford to retire at that mimimum retirement age. Another thing I find doubtful is the statement about OT. Most pensions do no figure in OT pay in computing your "high 3" or whatever formula is used. If that is the case in NY, that average pension is going to be 50% of something significantly less than $55,000.
That's why employers love OT, even if they have to pay time & a half. It doesn't cost them much extra in overhead or pension contributions, no health insurance premiums, no additonal vacation or sick leave accrual, etc. OT may even be cheaper than regular time for some outfits.

The bottom line is, if the City of NY is going to be paying, in 20 years' time, for not just its then-current employees AND everyone who is pulling 30-40 years' worth of retirement, then there is not going to be much money left in the budget for city services. New York won't be a very nice city to live in.

No, Derek, I don't remember it that way.

There has always been envy, but there was a time when there was a critical mass of union employees that drove the private sector expectations of wages and benefits. The private sector unions set the pace for the public unions, but now the public unions outpace everyone when it comes to benefits.

And no, $27 grand will not buy you a life of leisure, but it does place a floor below which you won't sink. And there was a time when everyone expected that floor to be there. Now, after 30 years of union-bashing, we have been turned against each other. Isn't this what the Social Security battle was about, the idea that only some people deserved to stop working?

So how do we fix this? Or should some of us starve quietly in the cold darkness while others play golf in the sun? Because that's the way this issue is going to be spun until everyone is cold and hungry.

We have to find a way to address this question that avoids the working class schizm that we see reflected in these posts.

Haven't plowed through the comments today--I'm up to my eyebrows in Solidworks--but given only the information Kevin put in his post, I don't see this deal as being particularly outrageous, particularly compared to a few other unions.

More information I'd need:

What benefits does that $55,000 include? Where are the health benefits in this, and what are they? If $55,000 is the average, what's the high and low end, and how does a worker get from one to the other? If you retire after more than 25 years, is the pension higher, as in the military?

How many people actually start working as a transit worker at the age of 30?

The bottom line is, if the City of NY is going to be paying, in 20 years' time, for not just its then-current employees AND everyone who is pulling 30-40 years' worth of retirement, then there is not going to be much money left in the budget for city services.

It is expected that employees in a 401(k) plan be able to manage their assets well enough to pay for 25-30 years of retirement. Shouldn't we expect as much for the city of NYC when it comes to funding their pensions? It's not magic-- you do some actuarial work, calculate how much you have to contribute to the pension fund every year based on the salaries of the workers, and invest those funds in annuities that provide the calculated benefit when it matures.

I don't really have any bigger point to make here

Then you should have stopped writing and hit the delete button right then and there, instead of advertising your ignorance on the subject.

Retirement at 55 indefensible? Why? Oh, because I drive a bus for a living. It is such a kick back job, right?

I wonder what time Mr. Drum wakes in the morning? 7, maybe 8? I wake at 4. Have been for twenty years.

How many times has Mr. Drum driven 12 hours in a day. That is my average day.

If Mr. Drum gets something horribly wrong, does he lose his job? I do.

Does Mr. Drum work with criminals sitting behind him? Has he ever been assaulted on the job? Do you think, Mr. Drum, that people get out of prison, and have a car waiting for them in the prison long term parking garage? No, they take the bus.

How about increased exposure to every illness. The smells of the street people. People who vent every negative thought they have at you. 5 minute breaks every 3 hours. No bathroom at the end of the line. Traffic eating your lunch breaks.

Every terrorism drill includes a dead bus driver. That is Al-quaida's M.O...... Transportation attacks.

Retirement at 55 indefensible? Only if you buy the New Republican talking points. Only if you are ashamed of defending working people in this country.

Thanks, Kevin, for proving the point that there is no political party in the U.S. that truly believes in supporting a middle class through deed and action. The Democratic Party believes that Union members are simply their modern day house niggers.

Jimmy Hoffa had you guys pegged right.

BTW, love they cat pics.

Kevin - I seem to remember you posting earlier (sometime this summer?) about how you thought people ought to be able to retire while they could still enjoy life; that is, not retire so old that all they can look forward to is more ill-health and (soon) death. What changed?

The goal in an advanced society OUGHT to be to work as little as possible at things you don't like and as much as possible at things you do like. Thus, people who do the necessary yet nasty jobs, like garbage collecting and bus driving, ought to be able to cash in earlier than, say, museum curators or set designers who are more than likely working as much for love as for money. Then the retirees can start their second career as a novelist or stately-home docent or growing orchids.

When did we get so mean as to resent people being able to retire before they died?

The Prairie Angel

Again with the "defending working people" garbage. TWUers are not working people. They are a particular group of workers who are exceptionally well cared for and coddled by our city due to their ability to cause a lot of trouble if they don't get their way. Kevin is absolutely right that these benefits - as compared with the average person the strike actually hurt - are excessive. That's the bottom line, because it's a zero sum game. TWU salaries comes out of the paychecks of regular New Yorkers. When these guys get excessive salaries eor benefits it costs working people in New York. No waiter, or school teacher, or janitor will get more because TWUers get a raise or better benefits; they get less.

It used to be the "American Dream" was that by your work, your kids would be better off. In other words, your kids would be, or at least very likely to be, progressively better off than you were.
That assumption is now reversed. Your kids are told others in the global economy will work for less; match or beat them or you're out of a job. True, the upper upper class will continue the Dream.
What will happen when you eliminate most of the middle class?

if TWU'ers aren't working people, how come they had to shut the subways down, lackoff knowledge?

Dumbass.

"The goal in an advanced society OUGHT to be to work as little as possible at things you don't like and as much as possible at things you do like."

Duh.

Really. You read shit like this and you look out the window, down at the floor, you try to cover your eyes. Is there no statement too banal to post here? Or is it "mean" to point out that people like Harold and Arachnoid here are dolts?

This strike was not about "working people" getting this that or the other. Does
anyone really not get this? The overall amount of cash available to NYC did not magically change this week. If Roger Touissant gets more in his already way too fat paycheck, that means less for other working NYers. That may be "mean" but it is also reality. TWUers get less and either we NYers have to pay more taxes or we get less services (no 2nd ave subway, for example).

No class-warfare rhetoric can change that

Not going to argue with you busdrivermike. My point was perfectly clear. If you did not understand it, you need to shut down your computer, step away from the keyboard, and hope for a brain transplant.

Lackoff's family has neglected to tell him where they've gone for the holidays.

He is sad.

lackoff, I don't know what your problem is, but I bet it's difficult to pronounce.

You haven't done anything here except lash out at everyone else who's posted.

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks supported social justice and decent wages.

No matter how often you repeat it, few will agree with your claims that transit workers are overcompensated.

The fact that Ken Lay and his corporate pals shirk their tax burdens means that you and I pay their share.

Okay, Kevin, just have the brutes work until they drop dead--is that what you want? You might well babble along "working" until you're in your dottage (which you might already be in), but the bodies of people who do physical labor break down in time. They deserve their retirement.

C

"You neglected to mention in addition to FERS "pension," Federal employees also get Social Security. Sure must be nice to be a Fed. employee these days. Especially compared to those of us without any pensions or 401K because we are "self-employed." Since we the tax-payers foot the bucks for those FERS contributions, why doesn't every taxpayer get that deal?"

Posted by: neb on December 24, 2005 at 10:20 AM | PERMALINK

For the record, NEB, FERS is built on 3 elements. One is Social Security. That's the same deal YOU get. But since you are selfemployed, you probably vastly underreport your income and underpay your income and selfemployment taxes. So that's the same deal you could have, if you are playing by the rules. But from your resentfulness of those who may get social security, I will infer that you are not paying your fair share.
Element 2 is the Thrift Savings Plan, which is like a 401K and largely funded by the employee's own contributions (government matches the first 5%, but many of the lower paid employees with kids or elderly parents can't even afford to pay anything, so they only get a 1% contribution from the government). This part is subject to stock market fluctuations and there are no guarantees. So that deal is also available to you in one form or another.
The third element is a pension of 1% of the average of your highest 3 years salary times the number of years of your service. This is defined benefit. You can retire at your Soc Sec retirement age minus 10 years, if you have a minimum of 30 years service. Or at age 62 with 20 years service.
Not bad compared to the private sector, but really sucky compared to most other 1st world countries.
But 30% of your final salary is not much security, expecially if we get hit by inflation (which IS coming when the bill for Bush's deficits come due). Retirees do not get the 2-3% pay COLAs as current employees.
Social Security is just as vulnerable for us as for you, and our TSP funds have generally fared no better than your 401Ks in the past few years. I'm 42 and my TSP is less than $50K after 15 years of service and contributing 10-12% of my own money for the last 10 of those year. Some people I know have made and/or lost a fortune in their TSP. Not much of a nest egg yet.
And that's the whole problem with defined contributions. You don't know how long you will have to live on that nest egg, so you work and you save for as long as you can. And then your brats get the TSP money when you keel over at your desk, and your employer and the gov't are off the hook for your pension and social security.
When federal employees were forced into the Social Security system by Ronald Reagan, to keep it solvent, they lost half of their defined benefits and only got shaky Social Security and a measly 5% TSP contribution in return.
You make it sound like RR GAVE us something besides a raw deal. You're a jackass. Why do I even bother reasoning to people like you?

Great Christmas Eve post Kevin.

Merry Christmas to you too, you sick fuck.

I keep hearing people argue that because they don't have a benefit, why should the next person. Using that standard, why should Americans have higher wages than people in South Asia? Why should we feel entitled to Social Security? Oh, you tell me but I paid into it. Well so did the employees of the TWU. When a contract is negotiated, the cost of the contract in total factors in wages, pension and health care benefits. That's why the MTA wanted to consider all three as part of the negotiaions. Previous settlements were predicated on allocating a funds to pay for both pension and health benefits.

Among the things that people don't take into consideration when looking at the NYC Transit workers is that unlike most employees, transit workers are required, due to the forced layover between rush hours, to work an average of 12 hours per day. Someone working that schedule for 30 years, has worked the equivalent of 45 year of 40 hour work weeks.

Way to spend energy worrying about the little folks while the FAT cats laugh all the way to their tanks and banks.

I forget to mention that our pensions cost us about 1% of our salary each year. So theoretically we are paying for part of that too.

Timothy - pipe down about the Goldman bonuses.
I worked damn hard this year analyzing options on oil and made Goldman a bundle. My $10 million bonus
was well deserved. Those damn bus drivers really screwed up my Christmas shopping though - my driver was stuck in traffic for hours as we inched up 5th Avenue. Good thing I took my 'date' and some coke along for the ride.
Don't go here: http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/biz/features/15197/

Repealing the commuter tax was a big mistake.

Kevin,

Overall, I feel that you do an excellant job day in and day out.

Keep up the good work.

The fact that both Democratic and Republican Administrations and Congresses have consistently protected coroporations pretty well ever since the US arrived does not alter the fact that 55 years is a ludicrously low age to have set for such unphysically-challenged workers to retire.

Remember, it was the reitrement age rise to 62 which was the sticking point. With Social Security being moved out slowly all the way to 70, since we are all living, fit and well, longer, 62 as a retiring age is a good idea.

And personally, I beleive the likes of Kenneth Lay should be stripped of every single cent they, and anybody they spread it to should be stripped too!!! I should love to hear him asking if I "would like fries with that."

Then I should also like to set a maximum compensation figure of some multiple of the lowest paid workers with a factor for size of company to give the biggest cvompany bosses a little more.

55 years is a ludicrously low age to have set for such unphysically-challenged workers to retire.

That depends. How much should they retire on? There are plenty of people who could retire at 55, except that they would have much lower retirement income than they would if they worked for 5-10 more years. Currently, at 55 and 25 years of work, they can retire on 1/2 of their income. Do you think that's fair? What if they could retire at 55 on 40% of their income? Would that be fair?

Is it the fact that they receive a $27k/yr (approx.-- we don't have reliable figures) at 55, or the fact that they can retire at 55 at all that bothers you? This is physical labor, after all.

Good Christ, Drum. Grab a clue, willya?

27.5K / year and mind-boggling health problems? In NEW YORK!!?

That IS indefensible, but not the way you're thinking.

You obviously don't know anything about what public employee unions are about. I work for a state and without the union we won't have anything. They made sure we had safe parking, medical benefits, and they try and get the state to put their share into our pension fund. Yes you get a pension based on the number of years you work divided by 55. However, you get that by getting lower wages for the entire time. We recently went 5 years without a raise. In addition no one contributes to our 453 (our 401K) plan but ourselves. Having a good pension is something we sacrifice wages for.

Steve is so right on. Why do we have to work when most of our freaking money taken away in taxes goes to keep other countries down while CEO's break off millions in golden parachutes? I mean those mutherfuckers are not making rightous decisions and even in politics those muther fuckers are not making rightous decisions. Bloomberg is a manager who wants to maintain a system of super exploitation of the working middle class. Not every white corporate or civic manager thinks this way, but in the main this mindset is most troubling because only a very few well paid professionals can profit at the expense of the masses. Corporate managers profit at the expense of the system they are governing similar to Corporate Exectuives in terms of pay scales..

So what you might ask? Well people it appears that our pensions are becoming problems for those who run risk management. If you notice, most of your properly invested pension funds have to turn a profit and that investment profit margin has to keep pace with the number of participants as well as pay a dividend to the operating company. Apparently the pension investment companies are in a feeding frenzy because their margins have to go up as well! And if we mention how the Federal goverment has really caused stock funds to decline, read here, it now is more profitable to invest in China or India than America, then the fantastic rates of return we experienced beginning twelve years ago under NO WAR CLINTON no longer be maintained. With Clinton in office and using his policies the DOW could have soared to well past the 20,000 mark as it was predicted to have done by money managers. Our pensions would have been gysering dollars out like Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park!!.

You see in a way people are voting against the viability of America as a way of demonstrating against this Warmonger Bush, if they can still turn a profit. I mean if you had a choice to give your money to Stink Nose or to Rose Smelling of course you apply your dollars all things being equal to the one whom pleased you in the most attractive catagories. Rose Smelling would have so much business that Stink Nose would have to begin to think,just what is really happening? Then Stink Nose would have to either change or die. Since dying is not an option, Stink Nose, changes. Guess what, we are not at the point where we are changing in IRAQ! This is the biggest Stinky problem by others who channel the investment money overseas which we need to have constantly incoming to prop up the US pensions funds!! The poor middle class worker now has to cut back in order to fund the lack of participation in pension markets and therefore prop up more goverment wrong headed corruption, more corporate miserly mentality in public services, and work longer under the most depressing conditions. When is it freaking gonna stop gotdaminit!

Do you recall the demeanor of Bloomberg when he was protesting the conditions caused by the Transit Workers being on strike? Here these people had put their lives on the line and all Bloomberg thought about was how many others were being gored. If Bloomberg, a mayor of the most well known city in all of the known world, really had the financial and public transportation interests of the Big Apple truly heart felt, he would have been much more embracing and less abrasive than he was in front of the TV cameras. Instead Bloomberg show us just what the rich have in store for us. More pain and no gain. Are you gonna take it? Are you gonna lie down like a dog and suck up to it? No I say, support changes in the goverment. Talk about what's going on at parties at Christmas and at your job. Be a voice of discontent by point out how your pension could be next and how healthy is your pension fund actually, given the climate we are expericing. You need to know because Social Security is next folks. Who's gonna suffer if the little people don't stand up and be counted?

Holla

Good posts on this thread--warmed my Christmas. Bus Driver Mike: thanks for all your hard work and sacrifice. I have friends who use your skill every day in the wildest traffic known to man and all come home safely every day. I am damned proud that most Democrats still appreciate working people. Kevin has a tendency to be elitist, which is odd since this Blog could be generated easily in India or China, along with the other skill set he used to ply. I get angry at every single lost job. Every single eroded benefit. Every time a worker is denigrated for whta he or she does. This is a great country built and maintained by back-breaking labor being run by people who in the main are not fit to wipe their shoes.

Lackoff--our burned bridges, lack of social skills or equinimity will ensure your place in Hell stays good and warm--listen to the Spirit of Christmas and help others with kind words, generous offerings and some humility. Living like a true Democrat brings a pricelessness to Christmas and each and every day. Give something to charity tonight or tomorrow everyone.

Remember, too, that the $55,000,000 figure being thrown around is only the average when you factor in overtime. A worker who works "only" a standard 40 hour week won't make anywhere near that. If TWU workers want to draw a real salary they have to trade-off time with their families to do so.

Well fiend, I'm afraid it does. Morningside Heights, $650/month (this is 2001) to share an apartment, health insurance covered by the school, no car, nobody to take care of but myself - after taxes this leaves ~$700-$800 month to feed and clothe myself. A couple thousand people do this every year (although stipends are now ~24K.)

What about utilities? Electricity, heat, cable, a home and/or cell phone, Internet access? What about the cost of a monthly Metrocard or other transportation costs?

The health insurance, I'm assuming, was picked up by Columbia, so that should rightly be factored into your income. You also weren't saving anything towards retirement, so that also undercuts your "comfortable" life.

That $700-$800 has to pay for a lot more than food and clothes, unless you lived in an unheated, unlectrified apartment with no furniture, TV, radio, computer, or Internet access, never travelled anywhere except on foot, and never had any emergency or unforeseen expenses.

I don't really have any bigger point to make here. I just thought I'd toss this out for comments.

Here's my comment: fuck you.

God forbid some working stiff should be able to "retire" and try to live on $27K a year, a full 12 years before he's eligible for either SS or Medicare. Guy's got a lotta nerve after 30 years or so of back-breaking labor.

Here's a thought, Drum: let's see you spend one fucking day doing the job of a transit worker in NYC. You'll be sobbing like a little girl before lunch.

And WTF is this?

An average salary of $55,000 a year? That's fine. Sure, it's pretty good money, but my guess is that most people are OK with it anyway.

Please tell me where the fuck 55K is a good annual salary if you have a spouse and two kids. Not in L.A. Certainly not in SF. Not in any major fucking city on either coast. Maybe in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere, but they don't have jobs that pay $55K.

You really are a fucking idiot.

Bah, humbug!

I do recall one of those silly stories about the "most stressful" jobs. Bus driver and cab driver were right up at the top (i think busdriver was actually the worst one). The general trend was that the most stressfull were the ones where the person felt (rightly) that they had no control over what happened to them. Might get barfed on, might be stuck in traffic, might have people yell at you all day, etc but nothing much you can do about any of it.

Also re gradschool:
One thing you may not be considering is that the low income lifestyle of a student is often not sustainable over the long term. I lived on very little during college and for a couple years after still a very low salary. It seems reasonably possible at first, but at one point (as my clothing began to literally disintegrate) I realized that basically all my posessions were things I had before school started. Clothes, sheets, furniture, tv, computer, etc or gifts. It wasn't possible to maintain even the frugal single lifestyle I had going then for decades on the money I was spending.

I'd like to see Jackoff and Kevin walking beside the third rail in unlighted, unheated, unairconditioned tunnels at four am with lots of rats and garbage for company for the next 25 years.

Merry Christmas.

Kevin, have you completely lost your mind? What the hell are you writing here? This was to be the most assine posts I've ever read.

Charles Dickens wrote wonder Christmas stories about people just like you. Here is hoping you are visited by three Christmas ghosts tonight. Otherwise I see no hope for you.

Kevin Drum can drop dead in his blue bathrobe.

Hey, I disagreed with Kevin's take on this issue (and said so with several posts above), but all this Drum-bashing is totally uncalled for. It's mean-spirited and completely overlooks the totality of Kevin's postings, which indicate that he's not anti-union, and not unsympathetic to the working stiff.

Geez, it's Christmas, he made a mistake, give the guy a break.

Scabbing on workers who are getting a fair wage and decent benefits is disgusting. Focus some attention on the crazy pay of executives, golden parachutes and rigged taxes of those at the top rather than the crumbs some workers have managed to scrap from the table.

idiot

I don't think Kevin is anti-union, just ill-informed. In part this comes from the weakness of the labor movement itself: as it is no longer the force it once was, good Dems like Kevin lose much direct contact with it in any real fashion. While endorsing it in the abstract - indeed, Kevin has done a better job than most bloggers at communicating the details of the Republican war on labor - he has little lived experience of what it means or how it operates.

Given that labor is THE key institution behind the Democratic Party - indeed, a substantial part of the foundation of the party - this is, to say the least, a disturbing finding. Imagine a senior Republican political figure or public intellectual not being fully aware of the dynamics in a key part of their base on which they rely for survival - say, the christian fundamentalist movement. Inconceivable.

In the 50s and through most of the 60s, when unions had a third of the workforce as members (and a substantially larger number were family members and friends), when it operated across the country (except for the south) for good and for ill, when its strikes and political decisions rippled throughout the society a political observer/intellectual like Kevin could not but take notice. That is no longer the case. Someone posted earlier in this thread that Kevin was picking up talking points from the Manhattan Institute, which is perhaps an exaggeration (and indeed, he approvingly quotes from the AEI. A few threads above he refers to the leading right-wing blogs as "sparring partners." But if Kevin is right about the war on labor, these aren't "sparring partners" - they are intellectual warriors bent on killing us.

But labor's weakness contributes to this intellectual drought, such that a key dem blogger is taking his intellectual lead from organizations explicitly devoted to undoing the power of the Democratic Party's core constituency - and not only by threatening them as organizations, but by implementing policies aimed at undermining the economic and physical well-being of its constituency.

I treat this thread as a wake-up call, and it shouldn't be a reduced to venting or name-calling. Education and conscientization around a progressive agenda literally starts at home: we have to wake up our own people - and especially those in the media - before we can be in a position to engage the country.

...it's Christmas, he made a mistake, give the guy a break.

It's no "mistake." Drum is the king of the brownshirt wanna-bes. He's just showing his true colors.

Fuck him.

Good grief what a bunch of sanctimonious twits.

Kevin, I don't even know why you bother given the quality of your commentariat.

Thanks for 8 years of Bushco and the continued hedgemony of the republican party you ranting ninnies.

As Kevin said in the initial post, look in the mirror for the reason unions aren't better supported in this country.

sorry i am late to this working class bashfest, i just want to say.. lackoff is a jackoff

Exhibit A. Dave wrote:

"And WTF is this?

An average salary of $55,000 a year? That's fine. Sure, it's pretty good money, but my guess is that most people are OK with it anyway.

Please tell me where the fuck 55K is a good annual salary if you have a spouse and two kids. Not in L.A. Certainly not in SF. Not in any major fucking city on either coast. Maybe in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere, but they don't have jobs that pay $55K.

You really are a fucking idiot."

Ever hear of two incomes you condescending fucktard?

Thanks, Skippy. Two incomes indeed.

This is why union jobs were traditionally a key means for entry into the ranks of the middle class - something every patriot ought to support.

And mind you, even the two incomes you refer to seldom buys wealth - in the major cities (with out of control housing bubbles) it means you can buy a house, two cars, and (if you are careful) send your kids to college and (if you are really careful) provide a satisfactory retirement - ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A DEFINED BENEFIT PENSION, whose existence Kevin described above as "indefensible" - the glib comment that got this particular rhetorical ball rolling.

Man I wish I had a job out of high school that pay $55K plus pension and benefits. I would go there and apply but I heard from New Yorkers that the waiting list is really long to get a job like that. Right now I'm just looking for a dead-end job that pays $12k after taxes and haven't had much luck.

I'm actually on the waiting list for a job that pays lot of money with no college degree required, Post Office workers. You know you've found a cushy job that pay ridiculouss money for unskilled task when there's a 2+ years waiting list just to get an interview.

Holy Cow! 25 years on a job with a $27,000 a year pension is indefensible? Do you think ANYONE can live on $27K in New York City? Yeah, you're supposed to save, too, but at $55K with two kids in New York that's not so easy.

I agree. But someone who retires at 55 presumably doesn't need to live on only that $27k. Most people of that age are healthy enough to continue to work, at least part time. Indeed, if one has two kids, the decision to stop working looks pretty questionable.

I think one item that needs to be mentioned in discussions of cost of living -- especially with respect to expensive blue state cities like New York -- is one's housing situation. The 55 year-old who purchased his home at age 30 (and has since managed to resist the temptation to tap into home equity) is in a far better position to retire early than the person who purchased his home in 2002. Housing is really the 800 pound gorilla of high cost of living cities. The difference for the average resident of Queens's standard of living between paying down a $130k mortgage taken out in 1983 and a $400k mortgage taken out in 2002 is huge. The former can live not much more expensively than a Houstonian. The latter cannot.

Ideally, discussions about public sector pay should focus on how much the taxpayers (or farepayers) need to pay to attract and keep highly qualified people. The public sector shouldn't overpay any more than private firms should. But if they underapay, service could suffer, and indeed, so could public safety.

I think to a great extent what we're seeing in NYC is the effects of the increasing fraying of the employer-provided safety net, and its spillover effects into the public sector. Simply put, what NYC subway employees get from their employer, especially in terms of job security, doen't look like such a bad deal, even to private sector workers who make a lot more money (but who are subject to a layoff notice at the whim of a board meeting). The job security premium that many public sector workers enjoy is itself worth a lot of money, and in brutal market terms probaby means their services can be had these days for less cash and benefits than would otherwise be the case.

Think the NYC transit authority would really have much trouble finding 20 or 30 thousand qualified workers in this day and age, especially in a labor market as vast as that of the tri-state area? It's pretty doubtful, and the union knows it. And that -- and not the threat of judicial fines -- is really why this strike failed.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah to all!

It's true that there are plenty of unemployed people who could be trained to do the jobs of the TWU workers, but that training would take some discernable amount of time, during which the system would remain shut down, doing great damage to New York's economy and social structure. It's widely assumed by many commentators here and elsewhere that the TWU jobs are unskilled, and that's not true -- a bus driver, train conductor or motorman is a skilled or at the least semi-skilled position, and you cannot throw Jane Doe off the street into that job without training.

It's for this reason that the union's strike was successful -- a demonstration that the union is serious about what it wants and wouldn't give in to the intimidation that the Taylor Law represents.

It's interesting to me how quickly we've gone from a situation where the man was, in the majority of households, expected to be the breadwinner while the woman raised the kids, to a situation where a barely sufficient salary is justified because it's expected that both parents will work. What's not often discussed is that in a househld where money is not plentiful, the child-care issues raised by both parents working (or a single-parent household for that matter) are a major problem, both monetarily and in terms of there not being sufficient resources for people to use.

If we're going to be a society in which the working class can only get by with both parents earning money, then isn't it incumbent on us to make sure the kids can be properly taken care of? Or, better yet, how about a society where one working parent can earn enough to raise a family, allowing the other parent to take care of the house?

It really should be a matter of options not necessity.

One other point -- it's true that people who have retired on half-salary can work at other jobs -- assuming they're physically able to (not necessarily true after 25 years of working in the subway), and assuming they can find another job at 55 without transferable skills.

I think Kevin is absolutely right in pointing out that people see the retirement at 55 as a problem, and it provokes ill feelings toward the union workers, but he's wrong in agreeing with them, given the actualities of their situtation. In any case, if it's a bad thing, it's one that union and management together are responsible for, since it came as a result of a labor negotiation.

If you are going to mandate that both spouses work full time (40 hours) all the time, you might as well mandate that they remain childless while you're about it.

Plus, if you are dependent on two salaries just to get by, you are also twice as likely to be thrown into bankruptcy if one is disabled.

Strikes by public employee unions are illegal. Mayor Bloomberg should have arrested the union leadership and gotten a judge to impose fines on not only the union organization, but on each union member for each day the strike continued.

When are we going to change the labor laws to make strikes in all service industries illegal. When a service industry union goes on strike, the primary victims are the customers. If both sides were looking at compulsory arbitration in the event they were unable to settle, it would provide more incentive to bargain in good faith because neither side can be sure what an arbitrator or arbitration board will decide.

Kevin,

You embryonic Republican you!!!! Merry Christmas, I'll send you an application for the GOP next year. Thanks for the post you made my holidays. Nuke the working man.

P.S.

If you do join the GOP, please indicate on the application form that you demand to be in the Ralph Reed/social conservative section. The McCain faction doesn't really share your contempt for upward mobility.

Back in the early 80s when I was a full professor at a flagship state university making about $30K and we were hiring new Ph.Ds at $15-16,000, one of my children, a new 19 year old graduate of the Culinary Institue of America, wouldn't consider a job paying less than $20K.

From the current edition of The Nation. Read Josh Freeman's piece on the TWU strike. Freeman - for those of you who don't know him - is one of the best labor historians around. And his book, In Transit: The Transport Workers Union and New York City, 1933-1966" is the definnitive treatment of the union.

A Fight for the Future
by JOSHUA B. FREEMAN

[posted online on December 22, 2005]

Editor's Note: Bus and subway workers in New York City agreed to return to work and to the bargaining table Thursday as negotiators for the Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transit Authority worked on a final settlement after a two-day strike that immobilized the city. Joshua B. Freeman examines the history and issues at stake: the fight against the lie that abstract, neutral economic necessity, not the ideas and interests of the rich and powerful, are driving the demolition of our social solidarity.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, 33,000 New York City transit workers did the unthinkable: They went on strike. For a quarter-century, transit negotiations in Gotham have been cliff-hangers, but each time, just as the last contract was expiring, a deal for a new one emerged, and threatened strikes did not materialize. Over those years, strikes of any kind became increasingly rare in the United States, as the use of replacement workers and threats to shut down or move operations made unions loath to use what was once a common weapon.

The current transit walkout was especially surprising, since it came in spite of a New York State law that makes public employee strikes illegal and imposes harsh penalties on striking unions and individual strikers.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 took the big risk of striking because it had little choice in the face of seemingly deliberate provocation by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the New York City bus and subway system. The biggest sticking point in bargaining was not wages but the demand by the transit agency for radical changes in health benefits and pensions for future workers.

Currently, most transit workers can retire with full benefits once they have both worked at least twenty-five years and reached the age of 55. The MTA insisted on raising the retirement age to 62 and making new hires pay 2 percent of their salary toward health insurance. It did so in spite of repeated statements by the union and its president, Roger Toussaint, that they would not accept any contract that gave new workers worse conditions than those current union members enjoyed. At the very last minute, the MTA came up with a revised offer that no longer called for upping the retirement age but instead for new workers to contribute 4 percent more of their salary toward pension benefits than current workers, in effect a 4 percent reduction in pay. Finding this unacceptable, the men and women who at rallies chant "Who Moves New York? We Move New York" decided to stop doing just that.

The MTA position seems to have been driven more by ideology and politics than economics. This year the transit agency reported a $1 billion surplus. It claims that it will have massive deficits into the foreseeable future, and it may indeed face fiscal challenges, but the agency has such a poor record of financial projections that no one outside of its own ranks takes it numbers seriously. Furthermore, as Steven Greenhouse reported in the New York Times, over the course of the MTA's proposed three-year contract, the increased pension contributions the agency wants from new workers would save it only $20 million, less than the cost of police overtime during the first two days of the strike.

New York Governor George Pataki appoints the largest bloc of members of the MTA board and is widely assumed to control it from behind the scenes. His delusional quest for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 may be playing a role in the MTA's bargaining stance. As Pataki has spent much of his governorship developing pragmatic relations with liberal labor groups, his new need to appeal to Republicans outside New York might well have made a tough-guy stance toward unions suddenly attractive. Who knows? Maybe he even had fantasies of being the next Calvin Coolidge, who parlayed his crushing of the 1919 Boston Police strike into the vice-presidential slot on the Republican ticket, ultimately entering the White House when Warren Harding died in office.

One of the most distressing aspects of the transit crisis has been the callousness of the MTA demands and the brutality of the rhetoric of the agency, the Governor, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and myriad conservative commentators. The inhumanity of the MTA position becomes clear when you look at what it would mean for particular workers. Take, for example, a track worker--the job Roger Toussaint held until becoming union president. The MTA argued that it is not enough to spend a quarter-century or more moving heavy rails in dark, dank, rat-infested tunnels, inches from the third rail and passing trains that can bring instant death, to earn retirement at 55. Rather, workers should have to keep doing that grueling work into their 60s! Then Bloomberg said that union leaders had acted "thuggishly" --but how so? They didn't beat people up or physically threaten anyone but simply withdrew their labor, an act legally protected for most workers in the United States. The Mayor went on to call the TWU and its leaders "frauds," "cowardly" and "selfish."

Others, like Ed Koch, who was mayor during the last transit strike, have been even more rabid in their contempt for transit workers and their union. It is hard to imagine that the same kind of language would be used against a predominantly white group. The multiracial TWU, with its prominent African-American leaders, seems to inspire a disturbing viciousness from white politicians. Thankfully, most New Yorkers do not seem to share their views, with expressions of support for the strikers common.

For three decades, business and political leaders have been chipping away at the social benefits that came out of the New Deal, union struggles and the expansive, post-World War II years of Western capitalism. Driven at first by economics, but increasingly by ideology, the crusade to dissolve all employer and state responsibility for individual welfare has swept like a grim reaper through pension plans, health insurance, labor rights and minimum wages. New York transit workers are fighting to stop that trend in their particular domain, not for themselves but for the next generation of workers. They are fighting against the lie that abstract, neutral economic necessity, not the ideas and interests of the rich and powerful, are driving the demolition of what remains of social solidarity. Their fight is worth supporting in itself, for the dignity and well-being of a group of hardworking women and men.

But it also is a fight for all of us, part of the long overdue need to stand up and say, No more.

Tbrosz Watch,

Many fine posts on this thread as Kevin pulls away from the curb in his chauffered (non-union) driven limo for his vacation. However, you have done yeomans work - You remind me of the fine work of Media Matters - Spin control and containment of the best quality.

Keep on the Watch.

Strikes by public employee unions are illegal. Mayor Bloomberg should have arrested the union leadership and gotten a judge to impose fines on not only the union organization, but on each union member for each day the strike continued.

How convenient for big business that strikes by the public service workers are illegal, but that screwing those same workers out of their salary and benefits isn't. Why not arrest and jail the MTA leadership and the MTA for every day they force the union employees to work without a contract? Why is the onus on the workers and not on management?

As a letter writer to the Times put it yesterday, a union that cannot strike cannot negotiate. It can only beg.

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When CEOs and corporations make a profit, we all sing hail to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. When the little guy manages to get a decent job with a decent deal, everyone screams "string em up". What is wrong with this country? Do you live to work or work to live?

Oakland, I know what is wrong with the country, or at least a piece of the 51% who voted for Bush; what worries me is what is wrong with Brother Drum (from whom we hope to hear weigh in when he returns from vacation). I am quite impressed by the clarity of posts on this thread, however. In this instance the readers are leading the way!

It's heartening to see liberals actually casting their lot with the working man and giving Drum the thrashing he deserves, here. I thought the past several years of Clinton worship had rotted principle completely.

Thanks for 8 years of Bushco and the continued hedgemony of the republican party you ranting ninnies.

As Kevin said in the initial post, look in the mirror for the reason unions aren't better supported in this country.

Oh good lord, you're the ranting ninny. What, exactly, is the connection between support for early retirement and the Bush nightmare?

As to your second remark, polls show that unions are generally well-supported in this country. They are just not robustly supported by the degenerates in corporate media or their pals in either wing of the Business Party. There is a variety of loser who, dividing his time between television news and real and virtual confabs with the the worst elements in the Democratic party, mistakes this for general opinion.

Despite all the hassles, in the end, a majority of New Yorkers supported the union over the MTA. One more reason why it is good to live here.

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- Where is the money going to come from, to pay all those people when they are retired? Who is going to be left, when the baby boomers are retired? We need to be looking for ways to keep the country in good working order. That will probably mean that a lot of us will work a lot longer than we would like to. At 62 years old right now, I don't do hard manual labor all the time, but when necessary I can do things that are much harder than driving; don't assume that we old duffers are so far over the hill that we are down the other side; bite me.

- The comment that there is something wrong with unions keeping people out of work so that other people can make more than the market would provide if it were free makes a lot of sense. How is it OK that thousands of people want jobs as transit workers and can't get them, and yet we keep increasing pay and benefits for those who have found a way to get in? When you buy a car, or a computer, or a ride on the subway, do you tip the car dealer, or the computer salesperson, or the subway personnel, 15% of the price, and if not, why doesn't it make just as much sense to pay extra there, as to pay the transit workers more than we would need to pay if we were concerned about the plight of all the available workers who want those jobs?

- Housing is indeed a lot of the reason for the high cost of living in New York and many places. How does it make sense that tenants can't afford the rent, and landlords can't afford to build apartment buildings and offer them for rent, and existing buildings are worth more for arson and insurance than for whatever they were built for? It is not the unions nor the landlords who have made that mess, it is the government.

- Why are we talking about retired transit workers on half salary living in NYC? When they are retired, they would have the great opportunity to live somewhere else (as the old song says, they can send me to hell or New York City, it would be about the same to me). If people insist on living in New York, that is not my problem, it is theirs.

- It would be lovely if everybody could work 40 hours per week and make enough money to support his wife and children; NOW might not agree with that, but lots of other people would. What are our politicans supposed to do (even assuming that they can ignore NOW and similar groups)? Can they stop the loss of manufacturing jobs - if we pass a law to repeal China and India, will those countries disappear? And, a lot of what people in this thread seem to want is for all of us to pay more than we want to, for goods and services; do we really want the politicians to tell us what to buy and how much to pay for it? Well, some of us do not want that; and that, probably more than anything else, is why liberal politicians - except to the extent that they can hide their true agenda of coercion and oppression - are having trouble winning elections. I've never been happy with the dumb voter theory; if you can't win with the truth, maybe you should think about whether you are really working for the best interests of the people.

Wow, what an "interesting" discussion! And it's gone on for days...

Well, all I know is that I don't even live in NY anymore and I am just getting by. I live in an inner suburb of DC in a rental, and I make $50K/year. I can barely make my rent, car, and insurance payments (due to my address, the car insurance is almost as much as the montly payment), and pay for a month worth of food and utilities. Next year I'll need to move because I will be renovated out of my apartment, and I CERTAINLY won't be able to afford the 45% rent increase being imposed on the new units. Forget about buying -- a 650-sf 1BR condo costs upwards of $300K.

So who needs to live in NYC to struggle on $55K/year!?

Merry Christmukkah!

Kevin Drum says: "Generally I agree, but there are limits. The status quo isn't always reasonable, and retirement at age 55 with only 25 years of service seems hard to defend."

You are wrong, wrong, wrong. Apparently Joe blow making a good deal is indefensible. But losing 9 billion in Iraq, Rumsfeld not being able to account for 2.4 trillion dollars in expenditures by DOD, pay raises for Congress, full medical and exhorbitant retirement benefits for politicians, tax cuts for the super rich, and hundreds of billions for Bush's illegal war in Iraq on behalf of Haliburton is reasonable and easy for you to defend.

No way. When the top quits ripping off the system you can come talk to us Joe Blows about what we have. Until then, control your envy. You made your bed (picked your career), you lie in it. Some people make big money, and some people get benefits to make up for the big money they don't get. This is called "career planning".
Hell Cheney is super, uber rich, makes BIG money, and still get all his freaking benefits including pension and guards. God knows he needs guards. Kevin, quit being an asshole.