Cecilie1200
Diamond Member
My city, Tucson, has experienced a 42-day strike of the bus drivers and mechanics for the city bus line, Sun Tran. The strike "coincidentally" started the same day as classes resumed in Tucson Unified School District, the largest school district in the state of Arizona. Also "coincidentally", the strike coincided with the arguably most unpleasant month of the year here, August, when there are not only 110-degree highs during the day, but also higher-than-normal humidity due to the monsoons passing through the area.
Tucson is not like cities such as New York and Chicago, where public transit is the norm for most residents. Our city is physically quite large and spread-out, and the vast majority of people here own cars and drive themselves everywhere. Consequently, virtually the only people who use the bus system are those who can't drive, ie. the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped. Oh, and students. The school districts have long found it more cost-effective to provide student bus passes to middle- and high-schoolers who live outside the area of the school they attend than to send a school bus for them if there are not other students living in the same area. And, of course, the U of A is virtually the only place in the city where resident parking is basically non-existent and prohibitively expensive, so most students ride buses when they leave campus.
For a month and a half, the city has watched the working poor losing their jobs due to the inability to get to work without the buses; senior citizens and people in wheelchairs waiting at bus stops for an hour or more in the blistering desert heat; the striking Teamsters picketing the downtown transit center being themselves picketed by angry passengers.
Sun Tran has worked hard to alleviate the inconvenience to passengers as much as possible, drafting salaried employees to drive buses on a limited weekday strike schedule, reimbursing monthly pass holders for 42 days worth of fares (now that we know exactly how many days NEED to be reimbursed), and even sending employees out in cars to deliver cold bottled water to passengers waiting at stops.
The drivers, by contrast, have done an execrable job of public relations, insisting ludicrously that the issues behind the strike are NOT caps on salaries and raises, but health and safety, despite the fact that the news outlets have been reporting the details of the various offers and counteroffers, and it's telling that nearly all the negotiation has been on the subject of salary and raises, not safety. Meanwhile, many of the drivers have gone public with expressions of disdain and contempt for the concerns of their passengers, stating things like "It's not our responsibility to make sure you get to work" (begging the question of what they think their job description and purpose actually IS).
I say all that to say this: the federal government and every state government all recognize that some jobs are simply too essential to the function of society to allow those who do them to shut down and hold society hostage via strikes, and therefore legally bar those jobs from going on strike. Federal law prohibits airline, railroad, dockworkers, and postal workers from going on strike as part of contract negotiations. Every state has laws prohibiting police and firefighters from going on strike, and many states also have laws prohibiting teachers from doing so.
Bearing all this in mind, I have decided that my new project in life is to lobby the Arizona State Legislature to pass a law declaring mass transit to be an essential public service. Wouldn't get rid of the Teamsters - as much as I wish it would, the bastards - or prevent collective bargaining on contracts, but it would prohibit them from holding the most vulnerable members of the community hostage as leverage to get their way.
Tucson is not like cities such as New York and Chicago, where public transit is the norm for most residents. Our city is physically quite large and spread-out, and the vast majority of people here own cars and drive themselves everywhere. Consequently, virtually the only people who use the bus system are those who can't drive, ie. the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped. Oh, and students. The school districts have long found it more cost-effective to provide student bus passes to middle- and high-schoolers who live outside the area of the school they attend than to send a school bus for them if there are not other students living in the same area. And, of course, the U of A is virtually the only place in the city where resident parking is basically non-existent and prohibitively expensive, so most students ride buses when they leave campus.
For a month and a half, the city has watched the working poor losing their jobs due to the inability to get to work without the buses; senior citizens and people in wheelchairs waiting at bus stops for an hour or more in the blistering desert heat; the striking Teamsters picketing the downtown transit center being themselves picketed by angry passengers.
Sun Tran has worked hard to alleviate the inconvenience to passengers as much as possible, drafting salaried employees to drive buses on a limited weekday strike schedule, reimbursing monthly pass holders for 42 days worth of fares (now that we know exactly how many days NEED to be reimbursed), and even sending employees out in cars to deliver cold bottled water to passengers waiting at stops.
The drivers, by contrast, have done an execrable job of public relations, insisting ludicrously that the issues behind the strike are NOT caps on salaries and raises, but health and safety, despite the fact that the news outlets have been reporting the details of the various offers and counteroffers, and it's telling that nearly all the negotiation has been on the subject of salary and raises, not safety. Meanwhile, many of the drivers have gone public with expressions of disdain and contempt for the concerns of their passengers, stating things like "It's not our responsibility to make sure you get to work" (begging the question of what they think their job description and purpose actually IS).
I say all that to say this: the federal government and every state government all recognize that some jobs are simply too essential to the function of society to allow those who do them to shut down and hold society hostage via strikes, and therefore legally bar those jobs from going on strike. Federal law prohibits airline, railroad, dockworkers, and postal workers from going on strike as part of contract negotiations. Every state has laws prohibiting police and firefighters from going on strike, and many states also have laws prohibiting teachers from doing so.
Bearing all this in mind, I have decided that my new project in life is to lobby the Arizona State Legislature to pass a law declaring mass transit to be an essential public service. Wouldn't get rid of the Teamsters - as much as I wish it would, the bastards - or prevent collective bargaining on contracts, but it would prohibit them from holding the most vulnerable members of the community hostage as leverage to get their way.
