Some More Pespective On the Transit Strike

Some interesting new numbers came out today that provides us ever more perspective on the recent New York transit strike, and more generally, on how the debate over workers' economic rights is totally skewed in this country.

As I wrote, the workers in New York were asking for $20 million more over three years than New York city/state government wanted to give them. And you might also recall that the media never bothered to once ask why the city/state politicians were refusing to provide this money just a month after handing over $1.5 billion in taxpayer-funded bonds for Goldman Sachs' new headquarters.

Now, today, Reuters reports "Wall Street bonuses are expected to have hit a record $21.5 billion in 2005 from $18.6 billion in 2004 as investment banks reaped record earnings...Goldman Sachs Chairman and Chief Executive Henry Paulson received a compensation package worth about $38 million." In other words, Goldman Sachs' CEO alone made more last year than the combined total that thousands of transit workers were requesting over three years in order to avoid cuts to their pension. He made this at the very same time politicians held photo-ops to laugh it up with him at a groundbreaking ceremony to hand over the taxpayer-funded bonds to him. And yet, many of those same politicians who hammed it up with Paulson while giving him taxpayer money were attacking transit workers as "thugs." Incredible.

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