The strike by five unions Saturday that shut down the Long Island Rail Road has created an unimaginable transportation nightmare, not just for riders but the whole region.
It leaves countless folks with no easy or practical way to travel between Long Island and the city, and every vehicle on the roads subject to painful traffic.
And while there’s been no shortage of finger-pointing for this calamity, make no mistake: One and only one party is to blame — the unions.
As usual, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s response was to target President Trump.
“The disruption that Long Islanders face starting tonight is the direct result of reckless actions by the Trump Administration to cut mediation short,” ranted Hochul.
Cut mediation short? Workers’ contracts expired three years ago. And the mediation that Team Trump arranged last year added months more to the talks.
Trump, meanwhile, and Hochul’s GOP rival for governor, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, blasted her for the strike.
“You should not have allowed this to happen,” chided the prez.
“Kathy Hochul failed to do her job,” charged Blakeman.
Huh? What was she supposed to do — order the MTA to cave to the unions’ outrageous demands and simply pass the cost to riders (or taxpayers)?
Those demands would translate into an 8% hike in LIRR fares, she noted.
Trump and Blakeman’s criticism line up with that of international president of the Transport Workers Union John Samuelsen, who preposterously claimed that Hochul triggered the strike so the “blame would be cast on Blakeman and the Republicans.”
Sorry: Blakeman had nothing to do with the negotiations, so there’s no way Hochul could’ve gotten away with blaming him.
No, responsibility lies solely with the five unions, which represent a mere 3,500 members, including engineers, signalmen and machinists.
They decided to take 300,000 daily riders — and a major slice of the regional economy (state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli puts the toll at $61 million a day) — hostage to extort salaries, benefits and work rules far better than what average private-sector workers, and even other MTA employees, get.
Per the MTA, average cash compensation for the five unions’ members topped $136,000 last year, putting them among the mostly highly paid rail workers in America.
Some 250 of them, as The Post reports, are hauling in six-digit overtime pay alone.
And though other unions accepted raises totaling 9.5% to cover the last three years, the five greedy unions demanded a boost for a fourth year, of 5%.
Nonetheless, the MTA bent over backward to come as close as possible to meeting those demands — without bankrupting the system, riders or taxpayers.
Its last offer included the equivalent to 4.5% pay hikes for the fourth year.
And still the unions struck.
If there’s any blame left to go around, it should target the federal law that lets LIRR unions, specifically, strike — unlike, say, New York’s Taylor Law, which prohibits most public employees from such job actions.
That law needs to be changed: Public transportation is far too vital to allow it to be weaponized by greedy unions.
Meanwhile, credit Hochul and MTA boss Janno Lieber for standing up to the union thugs.
New Yorkers affected by the strike should direct their anger at these unions — and let them know they won’t be held hostage to their outrageous demands.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
