It was only last Tuesday when I pointed out the $970,000 in grant money given to the Allegheny Institute over the last 3 years. Another mention of the Institute with no mention of the money from Richard Mellon Scaife being used to support itIt's bad enough that striking Philadelphia transit workers rejected what Gov. Ed Rendell called a "sensational" deal. What's really horrific is that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority offered such a deal in the first place.
Transport Workers Union Local 234 -- average member salary, $52,000 -- turned down a contract that included cumulative raises in excess of 11.5 percent over the next five years, a boost in pension payments and static worker contributions to health insurance.
In these times? That's daft. See what acquiescence to organized labor in the last contract got fare-paying Philadelphians and Pennsylvania taxpayers?
The Allegheny Institute for Public Policy reminds that such machinations could be permanently dispatched by leaving "the small minority of states that allow transit workers to strike."[emphasis added]
They're just taunting me now. I know it.
Yes, the Trib should absolutely disclose it. But I gotta say, as I get ready for my third consecutive day of walking 3 miles to get to my clients' offices, that I agree 100% with the point of this editorial. Yesterday, union picketers prevented busses from leaving the depot to go pick up passengers who had to jump from a train car that had caught on fire, and who were stranded alongside the railroad tracks.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've ever hated a union quite this much.