As a 3G (Third Generation) Liberal, I grew up with the notion of the sanctity of Labor, and, hence, of Labor Unions. Hang with some olde Lefties, as I have, and they’ll all tell you how unions transformed this country, created safer working environments, and boosted standards of living enough to foster the growth of the Middle Class in America. And it’s true. Passage of the National Labor Relations Act (The Wagner Act) of 1935 led to the amazing growth of organized labor over the next two decades. Union membership peaked in 1954 at 28%. That meant 17 million of America’s 60 million workers were union members.
But union rolls have declined ever since. By 2006, unionized workers comprised just 12% of the workforce. Even with the increased population of the US, that was a decline in real numbers, too. Today, there are about 15 million union members. In the last decade alone, while total employment rose 14%, union membership fell 5.6%.
If you read the AFL-CIO blog (I did), which recently said “The US has the lowest level of union membership and collective bargaining of any industrial nation… ” you might be tempted to agree with Big Labor’s assertion that the reason for this is “the repressive character of US labor law.” But that’s not the answer, not entirely. I have the answer. I discovered it quite by chance, last week, during my daily commute on the 8:04 Metro North train from Grand Central Station, New York, to Stamford, Connecticut. The answer is “Accountability.” There ain’t any.
I boarded the “fifth-rear car” of the train (car No. 8419 in case you’re interested). It was cold that morning, temperature around 20. Only when I got on and found a seat, and hung my coat on a hook, did I realize the air conditioning was on, loudly blowing cold air throughout the car. I looked around and the other passengers still had on their coats, gloves, scarves and hats. But, Hey! We had a seat on a crowded train, so we bundled up, sat down, and huddled in our seats. After the Fordham Road stop, the conductor came through the car to collect tickets. As he passed me, I said, “Excuse me, but could you possibly turn off the air conditioning? I don’t think we need it this morning.” And he ignored me! He kept on walking as if he hadn’t heard me. If you’ve ever heard me speak, you’d know that not hearing me is an unlikely proposition. And my wife will gladly tell you that the last thing you want to do is ignore me. So I raised my voice even louder and said again, “Excuse me, but could you possibly turn off the air conditioning? I don’t think we need it this morning.”
This time, people at the other end of the car turned around at the loud (and agitated) sound of my voice, and, seeing this, the conductor finally turned around, too. He pointed back to the car behind us and said, “Well, it’s warmer back in that car!” Which doesn’t help because – after Fordham – the train is packed and no seats are available. I replied, “But we are in this car, and the air conditioning is on. There’s a breeze in here. You can hear it and you can feel it.” He responded, “The air conditioning is not on. And I couldn’t do anything about it if it was. That’s all I can tell you.” And then he walked away.
That’s all he could tell me. The truth is, we all knew the A/C was on, because it had been on, blowing frigid air while the train was still sitting indoors at Grand Central. And the fact is, that the conductors know where every switch and control is located in every car, including the circuit-breaker panels for turning the A/C or heat and lights on or off. That’s part of their training.
But here’s another, deeper truth. This conductor didn’t give a rat’s ass what I said, or what the level of comfort of the passengers was, because he didn’t have to. He wasn’t wearing a nametag, or a badge with a number on it. Those who, like me, have occasionally tried to bitch to the Metro North railroad or its parent body, the MTA, know full well that there is no institutionalized, readily discernible complaint mechanism available. So it’s nearly impossible – it’s certainly a time-consuming burden – to lodge a complaint about anything. So nobody is accountable, so nobody cares what their riders think.
Could this conductor possibly lose his job, or even face the mildest of reprimands based on any complaint that actually does get filed? No way. The union would never permit that. No union would, unless perhaps (and only perhaps) if the object of the complaint, the union worker, had killed someone through his/her own negligence. They know their trains have the mass transit monopoly going north and west out of NYC. So screw us. Our complaints, our comfort, our riding experiences mean nothing to them.
Now, obviously, there are plenty of conductors on Metro North’s New Haven line who DO care about their riders’ comfort and wellbeing. Well, there are at least eight: Bob, Frank, John, Ken, Mark, Michael, Robert, Seth. This, after having ridden this train every workday since 1994. But they care because they want to, not because they have to.
When my children attended NYC public schools, there were occasions when a teacher or an assistant principal was found to be (not just accused of) doing something awful. Was that teacher fired, or suspended, or even removed from the classroom? Generally, not. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is a strong union in NYC, so, most-often, the worst thing that would happen – and it was rare -- to a teacher found to have violated his/her “charge” (or even her charges!) in some way, was that he would end up working in some administrative capacity at the district office. Again, their jobs were never in jeopardy, or at least their salary and benefits weren’t at risk, even if they weren’t doing the jobs they’d been hired for. They were not accountable.
At least in the public sector, I believe this is why unions have become so troubled. There is no incentive… no positive, no negative reinforcement for protected employees to give a damn about us, their customers. No economic consequences follow from a union worker’s rudeness, arrogance or indifference. And the social consequence? In many areas across America, and I don’t mean just corporate boardrooms, union labor is derogated, disdained and demeaned by a public grown tired of being treated so poorly. Only the police and fire unions retain a shred of the public’s respect, and that may be as much a function of the dangerous jobs their members do. When many unions go on strike, they can’t understand why the public has so little sympathy for their cause. Well, it serves you right if you lose your job for this, schmuck. Maybe a scab will remember better that the public has a right to be treated decently by a public employee. Not just because we are paying for a service, but, rather, because we are fellow human beings. Public employee unions forget this at their own peril. All the time.
You see, the final truth here is that that errant conductor needn’t have actually DONE anything to mollify me. All he had to say was, “Let me go check and see if there is anything I can do.” He could have made a slight show of caring about my comfort. Instead, and the old Liberal in me hates to say this, he chose to drive yet another nail into the coffin of the Union Movement. RIP.
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