Transit strike, Schmanzit strike

I must say I am a tad conflicted about the transit strike. "Fortunately" it doesn't affect my commute to work as the PATH is a separate entity so I don't have any personal bitterness towards striking workers. Usually I'm fairly pro-union since they tend to represent groups of workers who routinely get the shaft. Plus, in the words of the immortal Fucking Go, "Fuck the MTA." However, the more I read about the TWU demands, the more unreasonable they seem. So they don't want to contribute any of their paycheck for health insurance or retirement funding. Yeah, I'd like that too. I'd also like to retire at 55 and be guaranteed an average salary of $50K without actually having to produce results. And an 8% pay raise for 3 consecutive years? That'd be pretty freakin' sweet. The husband's company gave their employees a big 0% increase this year due to lack of funding - then they told him to go and buy a $1000 couch for the house he runs. Yeah, sure public workers probably need more protection than private empolyees who have more options for promotion and no salary ceiling, but come on. The MTA puts a deal on the table that allows the TWU to get average to high annual raises for the next three years (3%, 4%, 3 1/2% - much more then a lot of peoples' annual raises) and keep your retirement at 55 and they turn it down! That seems disingenous and grandstanding to me. However, the back and forth between people on the transit workers' blog has been a fantastic read for my slow days at work now that the end of the year is here and all the polymer physicists have better things to do then submit articles to my journal:

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