Poking large sleeping animals with sharp sticks

Both the MTA and I can't leave well enough alone.

After the transit strike, the TWU had to vote on the proposed contract. The union refused to accept it--11,334 against versus 11,327 for (and no calls for a recount). So, the MTA comes back with possibly the nastiest offer ever:

• Keeps provision that workers start contributing 1.5% of their salaries to health care (part of the voted-down contract);
  
• Takes away a pension contribution refund (was part of the voted-down contract);
  
• Reinstates the provision that new workers contribute 6% of their salaries toward their pensions, as opposed to 2% for current workers (was not part of the voted-down contact; was a major justification of union president Toussaint for the strike);
• Reinstates the MTA's demands for a merging of job categories (union hates this);
• Reinstates an expansion of one person train operation (union hates this);
• Keeps the same wage increases, but spreads them over 39 months rather than 37.

Whether this is just an MTA gambit to try to get the best possible terms in binding arbitration or to threaten the union into signing a contract, the TWU's fucked. Talk about internal divisions....7 votes! Toussaint's screwed, too, as he's getting it from all sides--newspapers and the government are mad because he struck and then was unable to deliver union sign-on, while the union's mad at him for not being radical enough and unable to deliver union sign-on. Oh yeah, and if you thought labor relations were bad before....oh my.

As for me, it's back to race! The New Yorker reviewed a book, called At Canaan's Edge, "the third and final volume of Taylor Branch’s monumental chronicle, America in the King Years, cover[ing] the period from 1965 to 1968.” Without further comment, I present:

King believed that, just as marching in Alabama had caused Johnson to embrace an accelerated voting-rights timetable, so marches exposing slums, unemployment, and inferior public schools in particular Northern cities would force the Administration and Congress to pass remedial legislation. However, he seriously underestimated the difference between targeting parochial Southern hierarchies and espousing a truly redistributive program that called into question the way of life of most middle-class white Americans.

Those "parochial Southern hierarchies" are less now, though not gone, but the Northern problems are unabated and, yes, extremely difficult to deal with.

Ok, after this spree of posts, I'm going to have to slow down to work on the FFAFSA (Fucking FAFSA) and research where I actually want to go to school (more choices now--Harvard, NYU, Penn, UVA, Northwestern, and Georgetown--with four left to hear from).