A Transit Strike, Oh Goodie

It's official. The buses and subways for the city that I work in went on strike at midnight – the Witching Hour on Halloween. Lovely. It's even made national news. Luckily I take the train to work so I'm not directly affected, but we ended up packed to the gills even with an extra car.

One of the hot topics at odds between the Transit Authority and Unions is health insurance. Apparently the workers do not currently contribute their health insurance premiums. I haven't been in that position since 2001 and that was for an HMO.

The Transit Authority is asking the workers to kick in some money towards their premiums. Having had to pay completely out of pocket for "catastrophic" coverage (high premium, high deductible, high co-insurance) in the past, a 5% chip-in for decent coverage doesn't sound like a bad deal. Basically if you need emergency surgery or something, it saves you from going bankrupt.

Raises are another touchy negotiation subject. From what I've read and heard, a lot of people haven't had raises in the last few years either and would be more than happy to receive a 3% raise. I guess it's times like this where it's hard to sympathize with the union given the rest of the employment environment.

I can now say that I’ve experienced a transit strike. That's probably not a good thing, but what can you do? If either of my transit providers went on strike, I'd probably have to resort to the expensive, luxury trains. That would put a huge dent in my budget but the thought of driving into the gives me a headache – and is probably something best to avoid when there’s a strike on. Let the people that have no other way in drive (and at least carpool to save gas, pollution and parking spaces).

That's my 2-cents at least.

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