Liberals, Progressives, and the bosses and enforcers of the organized crime syndicates known as labor unions often bemoan and wail about how they seldom achieve victories anymore.
But what would a union victory look like this more austere day and age?
The evidence indicates that it would look like defeat but with wider spread casualties.
The city of New York, faced with ever-increasing and unsustainable costs from its school busing program, made the decision to end its policy of no-bid contracts for school busing and to move to a more normative and open low-bid contract model. This instantly prompted the Amalgamated Transit Union, a cell of the AFL/CIO, to call a strike that crippled NYC’s school busing program for five weeks before the union finally suspended it on Wednesday, February 20, 2013.
More than 100,000 NYC students, including large numbers of special-needs children, were negatively impacted by the union’s strike, the first in the city since 1979.
The Result? The Victory?
When approximately 100 of the bus matrons reported for wJoseph Fazziaork at their Red Hook bus depot around 5:00 AM, they were informed that they no longer had jobs. Their employer, Canal Escorts, Inc. had folded and gone out of business due to their strike causing Canal Escorts, Inc. to be unable to meet its contractual requirements with the Department of Education during the month-long strike.
I’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m not losing another nickel more. This union thinks they can tell me what to do – they can go fuck themselves!
— Joseph Fazzia
President, Canal Escorts, Inc. (Defunct)
That was the result that Amalgamated Transit Union achieved. That was their victory. They went on strike against NYC’s upcoming shift to open, low-bid contracts and destroyed one – so far – of the private-sector employers that provided wages and benefits to their own constituency.
In some other plane the shade of King Pyrrhus of Epirus is shaking his head in dismay at their ignorance. Still, a few more victories like this and they will be undone, so there’s an upside to this situation.
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