Asking for a Subway Strike

How far left has the state Legislature turned? Well, it’s now considering giving MTA subway and bus workers the legal right to strike.

The state Taylor Law bans strikes by vital public workers, for obvious reasons: Such job actions impose far too much harm on the public. And these unions get other favorable privileges (such as friendly binding-arbitration processes) as compensation.

Not that the law actually prevents strikes. Most recently, Transport Workers Union Local 100 went out for three days just before Christmas in 2005.

But it paid a price: Its president did 10 days in jail, plus a $1,000 fine; the union itself got a $2.5 million fine. And the TWU lost automatic-dues-checkoff privileges, which cost it about $1.5 million a month in lost dues until a too-soft judge restored the deductions after just three months.

Yet now state Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-B’klyn) and Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Queens) want to gut the potential penalties, letting the TWU grind the city to a halt without consequences, straphangers be damned.

That’d leave the MTA little option but to give in to whatever outrageous demands the TWU chooses to make. And never mind that the transit agency’s already staring multibillion-dollar deficits in the face.

Yes, it’s entirely possible the Legislature’s leadership will bury the bill. Or that Gov. Hochul would veto it and find enough support for that to stick, despite Democrats’ supermajorities.

But the proposal is still yet another clear sign of the dangers posed by the left’s utter dominance in Albany.