Northwest Indiana Discussion

Why Unions Are To Blame For DC Metro Escalators Failing

By Tim Andrews • Friday, October 23, 2009

Next week will mark my one year anniversary of working in DC.

And do you know what? In this entire time - in almost 365 days - not once - I repeat - not once, have the Washington DC Metro escalators between my home and my office all been in operation.

I noticed this about a week into my job, and thought it a rather amusing coincidence. But it didn't change. Weeks became months, and I began to watch out for the one day when all the escalators between my home and my work would be in operation. It hasn't happened.

A year has now past. In this entire period - on NOT ONE DAY were all the escalators working between my home and my office. Anyone who lives in and around DC knows just how inconvinient (and how potentially hazerdous to some people's health) this is.

Look at this morning for example. The main escalator at my home stop (Huntington) was shut down for a period of several weeks a little over a month ago, and completly "refurbished". Mid-last week, it stopped working. It was shut down again for repairs, and still isn't operational (this morning the side escalator also didn't work, nor did the escalator or elavator at Metro Centre). According to the WMATA website, at this very moment there are 61 escalators out of service - a staggering quarter of all escalators.

This is just mind-blowing. The escalators alone have a staff of 192 employees, and a staggering $29.5 million annual budget. Having lived in cities all over the world with extensive public transport systems, this is beyond words.

So why is this? Why can every other city get it right, except for DC?

The answer is simple: unions. As the Alliance for Worker Freedom pointed out earlier this year, "Metro ignored the advice of an independent task force, which concluded that private-sector businesses would repair the escalators faster and at a lower cost than unionized government employees. Of course, WMATA continued "business as usual."

With the cosy WMATA-Union relationship, there is no incentive whatsoever to fix escalators permenantly, because if it happened, the Union would lose members, power and money. So,a perverse incentive exists to KEEP THEM BROKEN! This is public choice theory demonstrated in practice at its most basic. Rent-seeking unions want more taxpayer money to "solve" the problems they themselves create.

This is especially evident in the "minor" shutdowns that shut an escalator down for a few hours.

WMATA states: "there are safety sensors the entire length of an escalator to monitor if a foot gets between the step and the side wall.. These are very sensitive sensors and will shut an escalator off with the slightest pressure....Roughly 66% of escalator shut downs are caused by safety switch activations [by riders].Every time an escalator shuts down because of one of these sensors, we need to dispatch a technician to trouble shoot the problem and re-set the unit."

So. Someone's foot brushes across the side of an escalator. It stops - that's understandable. But, unlike in every other city in the world where the station attendent will simply turn it back on, in DC, to provide useless work for Union friendss, WMATA must call out for a Union technician, wait 2 hours, and then have them press the on-switch. All under the guise of "safety". The other excuses they give, such as that people shouldn't walk up escalators, are equally farcial when you consider every other major world city can cope with such things.

So the next time you're tired and forced to climb a mountain of stairs at the DC Metro, rememebr to thank the unions.

http://www.workerfreedom.org/unions-bla ... ling-a3709

Pennsylvania Union Leader Criticized for Threatening Legal Action Over Boy Scout's Volunteerism

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Diane Macedo

A Pennsylvania union leader has come under fire after threatening legal action against the city of Allentown for allowing a Boy Scout to voluntarily clear a walking path in a local park.

Nick Balzano, president of the Service Employees International Union's Allentown chapter, said last week that the union might file a grievance against the city for allowing 17-year-old Kevin Anderson to clear the hiking trail, instead of paying some of the 39 recently laid-off SEIU members to do the work.

Balzano's office did not return messages left by FoxNews.com, but the Morning Call quoted him as telling the city council that the union would be "looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails … There's to be no volunteers."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575650,00.html

God Almighty what a bunch of scumbags.

Extortion, racketeering, and threatening the Boy Scouts.

Typical.

The AFL-CIO has told Washington Whispers it will redeploy funds away from political candidates smack dab in the middle of election season, the latest sign that the largest federation of unions in the country could be becoming increasingly disillusioned with President Obama.

The federation says the shift has been in the works for months, and had nothing to do with the president’s failure to show in Wisconsin last week, where labor unions led a failed recall election of Governor Scott Walker.

“We wanted to start investing our funds in our own infrastructure and advocacy,” AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein told Whispers. “There will be less contributions to candidates,” including President Obama.

While there were “a lot of different opinions” about whether Obama should have gone to Wisconsin, according to Goldstein, “this is not a slight at the president.”

The AFL-CIO has been at odds with the president before Wisconsin on issues such as the public health insurance option and renewing the Bush tax cuts.

The shift in funding is significant due to the federation’s role in past presidential campaigns, where the AFL-CIO built up a massive political structure in the months leading up the election, including extensive “Get Out The Vote” efforts, as well as financial contributions.

Saved jobs?

he didn't save sh!t

Damon Silvers, the director of policy at the AFL-CIO, speaking at a liberal activist conference today, said that the U.S. economy “remains weak” and needs to be revived by trillions of dollars in new government spending and drastically higher taxes, especially on those with higher incomes.

The address by Silvers to the Take Back the American Dream conference of the Campaign for America’s Future underscores the difficult position President Obama is in as he faces reelection. Obama’s reelection chances hinge on his ability to convince Americans that the economy is improving, but the liberal narrative is that the nation is facing a litany of problems that require even bolder action than Obama pursued in his first term.

“Economic growth in this country remains weak,” Silvers said. “From month to month, it’s a little unclear how weak it is, but it’s weak.”

He said, “When we talk about infrastructure, we need to talk about trillions, not billions. When we talk about taxes where the wealthy pay their fair share, repealing the Bush tax cuts is not enough. It doesn’t even begin to be enough.”

Over all, over 4.2 million jobs created so far under Bammy

What fantasy are you living in?

tell us edge. What percentage of that ridiculous number is private sector and what percentage is government related jobs?

Public Sector Austerity A Major Drag on Unemployment
In the last week, both blogger Ezra Klein and Yale economists Ben Polak and Peter K. Schott released research that makes a strong case that the public sector layoffs that have taken place during the recession and beyond have made a significant negative dent in the nation's employment rate. The country's current 8.2 unemployment rate would be as low as 7.0 if it weren't for the hidden austerity programs that have hit both the federal and state government employee pools in recent years.

Since Obama was elected, the public sector has lost about 600,000 jobs. If you put those jobs back, the unemployment rate would be 7.8 percent.
But what if we did more than that? At this point in George W. Bush’s administration, public-sector employment had grown by 3.7 percent. That would be equal to a bit over 800,000 jobs today. If you add those hypothetical jobs, the unemployment rate falls to 7.3 percent.