Tuesday, December 20, 2005
It's About Respect
From the Associated Press:
As I said in an earlier post, I can sympathize.
I feel underappreciated and disresepcted as a teacher too - by the public, by the politicians, and by the press. I'm pretty sure that's why I got so irate at the concessions UFT preznit Randi Weingarten agreed to in the last teacher's contract.
I already feel put upon by the chancellor and the pinheads at the DOE and now the mayor and the chancellor want even more power over me and my own union leadership is agreeing to it?
Sheesh - this is a bad time to be a union member. While the Tom Friedmans of the world praise the benefits of globalization, the Mike Bloombergs and Jack Welchs of the world are using it as an excuse to squeeze the middle and working classes for all their worth, up the productivity, freeze the wages, and transfer the costs of health care and retirement completely onto workers.
'Everybody treats us like crap'
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
It isn't about money or pensions for Angel Ortiz. It's about the contemptuous glances, angry passenger rants and abusive bosses who rack up discipline slips and are stingy about sick days.
“Everybody treats us like crap all the time. We’re tired of being treated like we’re the garbage of the city,” said Ortiz, 32, standing on the Bronx-Manhattan border Tuesday with hundreds of other striking transit workers underneath an elevated rail line that ran no trains.
It was one of several picket lines Tuesday across New York, where 33,000 transit workers walked off the job amid a bitter dispute over wages and pension benefits for new hires. Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint talked about “a fight over dignity and respect on the job, a concept that is very alien to the MTA.”
“Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected,” said Toussaint.
Charles Craft, who works on the tracks of the L subway line in Brooklyn, said there are grueling costs to working in the subways. “You’ve got to deal with the rats. Human feces, urine. You’ve got the third rail,” said Craft, 47, an MTA employee for 18 years. He said some bosses treat his colleagues “like animals.”
As I said in an earlier post, I can sympathize.
I feel underappreciated and disresepcted as a teacher too - by the public, by the politicians, and by the press. I'm pretty sure that's why I got so irate at the concessions UFT preznit Randi Weingarten agreed to in the last teacher's contract.
I already feel put upon by the chancellor and the pinheads at the DOE and now the mayor and the chancellor want even more power over me and my own union leadership is agreeing to it?
Sheesh - this is a bad time to be a union member. While the Tom Friedmans of the world praise the benefits of globalization, the Mike Bloombergs and Jack Welchs of the world are using it as an excuse to squeeze the middle and working classes for all their worth, up the productivity, freeze the wages, and transfer the costs of health care and retirement completely onto workers.
