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This week’s Long Island Rail Road walkout holds a lesson for Gov. Kathy Hochul: We’re going to need a bigger strike.
And when this new agreement expires just 15 months from now, Hochul — assuming she wins re-election this fall — has the tools she needs to make a deal that finally addresses the railroad’s decades-old labor issues.
Last Friday, five LIRR unions walked off the job to protest the state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s modest effort to hold the line on raises.
Hochul, to her credit, didn’t immediately cave just to keep the trains running.
She leveled with the public, treating riders as adults.
“These unions represent the highest-paid workers of any railroad in the nation, yet they are demanding contracts that could raise fares as much as 8%,” she said.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Nicole is the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car, available now.