Shocker: NY Sanitation workers targeted specific neighborhoods for non-service

from theblogprof by The blogprof


Shocker: NY Sanitation workers targeted specific neighborhoods for non-service: "If union bosses spent this much time figuring out how to better serve the taxpayers, there would be no issue with union compensation. Alas, that's not the case. From the New York Post via Instapundit, the ultimate snowjob:

There was a method to their madness.

The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear, The Post has learned.

Their motives emerged yesterday as the city's Department of Investigation admitted it began a probe earlier this week after hearing rumblings of a coordinated job action.

Sources told The Post several neighborhoods were on the workers' hit list -- including Borough Park and Dyker Heights in Brooklyn and Middle Village in Queens -- because residents there have more money and their politicians carry big sticks.

'It was more targeted than people actually think,' said a labor source. 'Borough Park was specifically targeted [because of] . . . its ability to sort of gin up the p.r. machine.'

The plan worked. Residents of those neighborhoods -- who, after three days, were still trying to dig out their cars -- are apoplectic.

'It's hurting people for greed,' seethed Barry Coogan, 60, who lives on 64th Road in Middle Village. 'Whoever made those decisions should lose their jobs.

Yeah - good luck with getting a union boss in New York City fired. More from the New York Post on this:

• VIDEO OF A SNOWPLOW THAT MAY HAVE BYPASSED AN ICY STREET
• STORM'S BABY NIGHTMARE
• BAD NEWS 'BARES'
• BULL-DOZER 'FOLLOWING ORDERS'

Via another Insty thread: THE NEW YORK SNOW DEBACLE: Time To Rethink Public Employee Unions. If by “rethink” you mean “outlaw.”

...the union may be responsible for at least one death. Mayor Bloomberg has vowed to investigate.

It remains to be seen what will come of this particular controversy, but the broader point is coming into ever-clearer focus: it is time to ban public employee unions.

For the large majority of our history, public employee unions have been illegal. It is only since the 1960s and 1970s that they have been allowed. Currently, they are legal in roughly half the states. The United States has carried on a four-decade experiment in legalization, and the results are in: public employee unions are a cancer on our country.

Public employee unions flourish because government is, by its nature, a monopoly. Thus, there is no need for unionized government units to compete against non-unionized units. Moreover, public officials who negotiate with public employee unions generally lack the same incentives that private employers have to keep costs down. The result has been a fiscal disaster, with numerous states and municipalities now going over the waterfall of bankruptcy.

Unions were developed to stick it to 'the man.' But who are public sector unions sticking it to? Is 'the man' not the taxpayer that is supposed to be served by them? In that case, how do these public sector workers get benefits far more generous than the taxpayers they are supposed to be serving? And it's not just the cost, but the political graft:

Political graft such as this:

Van Smith of Baltimore's City Paper should have known better than to write a piece documenting the criminal background of Local 333 of the International Longshoremen's Association. The union responded by picketing his paper — even demanding his resonation:

The taxpayers' money at work - printing signs that aren't even spelled correctly.

"