2 ms·

Let me begin by saying that we're not unfirable. It takes a bit more doing, but you can either be shown the door eventually or reshuffled into a go-nowhere job

Let me begin by saying that we're not unfirable. It takes a bit more doing, but you can either be shown the door eventually or reshuffled into a go-nowhere job with no responsibility that'd otherwise be done by a new hire or something. Don't know if you've experienced this where you work, but we love to complain bout other union employees in other departments. I've done it and heard others do it more times than I can count. "Oh, this work is being sent to so-and-so? Good luck." "You have to get a report from that department?" - that kind of thing. There's not exactly a deep and abiding sense of union solidarity or anything. Just, most of the credit for broad disfunction, at least where I work, goes to management. Too many of them doing too little. Politics, chasing around every silly idea that pops into upper management's head, working to justify what they already decided, that kind of thing. When a big project here fails, that's the talk around the water cooler, at least. I don't work at MTA but I guess most big organizations would be similar.

bradleyjg 4y ago
The MTA has many many problems. Perhaps the main root is that the governance structure diffuses responsibility. When the governor is asked about problems at the MTA she points out that she doesn’t have full control of the agency and that’s true. Nor does any other elected politician. But if we go beyond the root causes and look at the proximate causes—yes, that includes understaffed and incompetent management, too many contractors picked and supervised via a terrible bidding system, lack of cooperation from other government agencies, excessive litigation costs—-but also union/civil service featherbedding. The people that live here see municipal workers standing around doing nothing. We read about those gaming the overtime system and building secret clubhouses. We know about rubber rooms where teachers sit for years while the process to fire them plays out. A famous New Yorker once wrote a book titled “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining!” That’s basically how I feel about the unions in NYC.
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  >The people that live here see municipal workers standing around doing nothing. We read about those gaming the overtime system and building secret clubhouses. I would argue that in many cases these kinds of things are management choices, too. As an example, I'll use my dad who works in a more traditionally blue-collar local government union job doing construction work. When I was young, he busted his butt building stuff, now near retirement he spends much of his time "standing around doing nothing" - however, this comes down to outsourcing and lack of hiring. All large projects now are outsourced (this gives the opportunity to graft, and may or may not actually reduce cost). However, they still need a skeleton crew of actual staff for projects that don't make sense to outsource short of contracting the whole construction function: fix a broken window, paint a wall, hang a door, change a broken window AC unit. Now, he may have one or two such hour-long jobs to do in a day, and he is able to spend most of the day "standing around doing nothing" while completing every request on time, and he's not exactly rushing the work.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    The other things about standing around is modern machines get so much more done that most of the time it doesn't pay to work. A single scoup of an excavator is more than one person with a shovel can do in the day, so what is the point of even trying. Sometimes someone needs to dig by hand. Now it may seem like get rid of people, but the problem is every 20 minutes you need all those people to do something that must be done by hand, then they all work for 5 minutes and stand around again while the machine works.
abduhl 4y ago
>>Let me begin by saying that we're not unfirable. It takes a bit more doing, but you can either be shown the door eventually or reshuffled into a go-nowhere job with no responsibility that'd otherwise be done by a new hire or something. The phrase “we’re not unfirable” is incompatible with the statement “you can be shown the door OR reshuffled into a go-nowhere job” in my mind. If your response to “we can’t fire union workers” is “well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do” then I guess you really can’t be fired. Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management? And you think that there’s too much management while this article mentions downsizing of management/engineering by a factor of 10 (1600 -> 124)?
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  >“well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do” That's not really how it works here. Pay band for a given job title is strict and relatively narrow, and the way you substantially increase pay is by moving into management or getting a new title, which are both up to management to decide. So, the hypothetical loafer/shirker long-tenured guy may be getting paid 15%-20% more than the guy in his title who's just out of school, not exactly a big paycheck. >Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management? Funny. Most of the "layarounds" we all know about are heavily protected by their management, either they're on very good personal terms or are very narrowly doing the work they're asked to make the boss happy and don't care much about a request from me. I've seen quite a few people pushed out the door here and it's typically not one of them, usually it's those with personal issues with the boss.
  - abduhl 4y ago
    You don’t get it: if you should be fired then you should be getting paid 0%-0% of what a guy just out of school is getting paid, not 15%-20% more. And you sure as shit shouldn’t be getting benefits, accruing years of seniority, and accruing years towards your retirement benefits.

bradleyjg 4y ago

The MTA has many many problems. Perhaps the main root is that the governance structure diffuses responsibility. When the governor is asked about problems at the MTA she points out that she doesn’t have full control of the agency and that’s true. Nor does any other elected politician. But if we go beyond the root causes and look at the proximate causes—yes, that includes understaffed and incompetent management, too many contractors picked and supervised via a terrible bidding system, lack of cooperation from other government agencies, excessive litigation costs—-but also union/civil service featherbedding. The people that live here see municipal workers standing around doing nothing. We read about those gaming the overtime system and building secret clubhouses. We know about rubber rooms where teachers sit for years while the process to fire them plays out. A famous New Yorker once wrote a book titled “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining!” That’s basically how I feel about the unions in NYC.

cool_dude85 4y ago
>The people that live here see municipal workers standing around doing nothing. We read about those gaming the overtime system and building secret clubhouses. I would argue that in many cases these kinds of things are management choices, too. As an example, I'll use my dad who works in a more traditionally blue-collar local government union job doing construction work. When I was young, he busted his butt building stuff, now near retirement he spends much of his time "standing around doing nothing" - however, this comes down to outsourcing and lack of hiring. All large projects now are outsourced (this gives the opportunity to graft, and may or may not actually reduce cost). However, they still need a skeleton crew of actual staff for projects that don't make sense to outsource short of contracting the whole construction function: fix a broken window, paint a wall, hang a door, change a broken window AC unit. Now, he may have one or two such hour-long jobs to do in a day, and he is able to spend most of the day "standing around doing nothing" while completing every request on time, and he's not exactly rushing the work.
- bluGill 4y ago
  The other things about standing around is modern machines get so much more done that most of the time it doesn't pay to work. A single scoup of an excavator is more than one person with a shovel can do in the day, so what is the point of even trying. Sometimes someone needs to dig by hand. Now it may seem like get rid of people, but the problem is every 20 minutes you need all those people to do something that must be done by hand, then they all work for 5 minutes and stand around again while the machine works.

abduhl 4y ago

>>Let me begin by saying that we're not unfirable. It takes a bit more doing, but you can either be shown the door eventually or reshuffled into a go-nowhere job with no responsibility that'd otherwise be done by a new hire or something. The phrase “we’re not unfirable” is incompatible with the statement “you can be shown the door OR reshuffled into a go-nowhere job” in my mind. If your response to “we can’t fire union workers” is “well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do” then I guess you really can’t be fired. Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management? And you think that there’s too much management while this article mentions downsizing of management/engineering by a factor of 10 (1600 -> 124)?

cool_dude85 4y ago
>“well but you can give us a big paycheck based on our seniority to do a job a new hire could do” That's not really how it works here. Pay band for a given job title is strict and relatively narrow, and the way you substantially increase pay is by moving into management or getting a new title, which are both up to management to decide. So, the hypothetical loafer/shirker long-tenured guy may be getting paid 15%-20% more than the guy in his title who's just out of school, not exactly a big paycheck. >Even amongst the union it seems like you realize the union is inefficient and staffed with layarounds. But when there’s a problem you blame management? Funny. Most of the "layarounds" we all know about are heavily protected by their management, either they're on very good personal terms or are very narrowly doing the work they're asked to make the boss happy and don't care much about a request from me. I've seen quite a few people pushed out the door here and it's typically not one of them, usually it's those with personal issues with the boss.
- abduhl 4y ago
  You don’t get it: if you should be fired then you should be getting paid 0%-0% of what a guy just out of school is getting paid, not 15%-20% more. And you sure as shit shouldn’t be getting benefits, accruing years of seniority, and accruing years towards your retirement benefits.