{"id":18735,"date":"2026-05-24T11:23:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T11:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/24\/coercive-unionism-briefly-freezes-long-island-rr-capital-research-center\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T11:23:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T11:23:40","slug":"coercive-unionism-briefly-freezes-long-island-rr-capital-research-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/24\/coercive-unionism-briefly-freezes-long-island-rr-capital-research-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Coercive unionism (briefly) freezes Long Island RR – Capital Research Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, five unions representing 3,500 railroad workers on the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) decided that they should shut down the commutes<\/a> of roughly 300,000 New York City area commuters by striking against the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority. An agreement to end the strike was reached late Monday night<\/a>, the details of which were not immediately publicly disclosed.
During the strike, local, state, and federal politicians blamed each other and, perhaps with an eye toward their fortunes in future elections, tried not to antagonize Big Labor in what is probably Big Labor\u2019s strongest state. The New York Post<\/em> editors placed the blame<\/a> where it properly lies: \u201cOne and only one party is to blame \u2014 the unions.\u201d
I got into the wrong line of work<\/strong>
Because union rhetoric hasn\u2019t evolved since socialist politician Eugene V. Debs was leading trainmen\u2019s strikes<\/a> in the late 1800s, strikers presented their shutdown of a vital artery of America\u2019s largest metropolitan area not as extortion but as the only thing keeping them in the middle class. AmNY, a New York City outlet, quoted striker<\/a> Karl Bischoff saying, \u201cShe\u2019s [New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D)] got money for everything except for our salaries [\u2026] I mean, we have free money to give to everybody across this entire state, but you have no money for the people to actually go out and work.\u201d
Whatever you think of Mr. Bischoff\u2019s opinions about New York\u2019s welfare state, it is completely untrue that New York taxpayers have no money for him or his colleagues. According to the Empire Center for Public Policy\u2019s \u201cSee Through NY<\/a>\u201d database of New York state government worker salaries, he made $292,435 in 2024, the most recent year for which the Empire Center had a record for him. Even in urban New York, that salary\u2014which would place Mr. Bischoff in the 97th percentile for individual income<\/a> nationwide, according to personal finance website DQYDJ\u2014is hardly a pauper\u2019s wage; the median household <\/em>income in Nassau County, the large Long Island suburban county bordering New York City\u2019s Queens borough, is \u201conly\u201d $146,202<\/a>.
His colleagues are similarly overcompensated. The New York Post <\/em>reported<\/a> that 11 LIRR employees made $200,000 or more in overtime alone<\/em>, with an additional 314 making a $100,000-plus overtime haul. (This is on top a typically six-figure base wage packet.) With this much money flying around, it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that fraud follows: In 2021, five LIRR workers (including one who happened to be the son of an alleged Mafia captain<\/a>) were charged with offenses<\/a> related to committing timesheet fraud to farm even more overtime payments than those to which they were entitled. (All pleaded guilty to offenses related to the scheme; \u201cOvertime King<\/a>\u201d Thomas Caputo was sentenced to eight months in jail.)
It\u2019s the work rules, stupid<\/strong>
Returning to angry Mr. Bischoff and the Empire Center database, the data show that he is paid $50 per hour as an engineer (what the British call \u201ctrain drivers\u201d). It\u2019s decent money for skilled work, but getting from $50\/hour to $292,435 would require him to work 5,848 hours at his normal rate\u2014two years of eight-hour working days, with no weekends. So, something doesn\u2019t add up.
But this isn\u2019t a case of illegal <\/em>grift like the 2021 timesheet fraudsters; this is legally sanctioned <\/em>union grift. As Ken Girardin of the Manhattan Institute told the Post<\/em><\/a>: \u201cThe system is so distorted that it\u2019s hard to tell what is legal waste and illegal waste.\u201d
For complicated reasons, the state takeover of the LIRR saddled MTA with work rules designed for railroads of Eugene V. Debs\u2019s day, not the 21st century. (In Debs\u2019s day, trainmen had to always be fully on top of their dangerous work, lest the steam-powered controlled pipe bombs they were operating literally explode<\/a>.) It is those work rules that MTA negotiators have sought to reform\u2014even at the cost of increasing workers\u2019 base wages\u2014and that the unions stopped service to protect. In a statement<\/a>, MTA CEO Janno Lieber said, \u201cthe unions have those outrageous work rules that allow these workers to pile up overtime, rules which they have refused to even discuss at the bargaining table.\u201d
So, what are the rules? The Effective Transit Alliance explains the most notorious of them<\/a>:
The primary work rules in question are for train engineers, represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET). Regardless of how many hours they work in a given shift, BLET workers are entitled to an additional 8-hour shift\u2019s pay if they do any of the following:
Remarkably, this benefit is for each action performed, so a BLET worker could theoretically net three shifts\u2019 pay for a single 8-hour shift. These payments effectively boost engineers\u2019 salaries by an average of 15%.<\/a>
Add in more rules, time-and-a-half considerations, and similar extra payments and you get taxpayers buying one year\u2019s work for the price of two. It\u2019s a nice racket if you\u2019re part of it, and that is why the BLET (a division of the Teamsters Union) is one of the five unions that shut things down.
What is to be done<\/strong>
Now that the strike is over, New York State taxpayers and LIRR riders have to hold their breaths that the state government did not sell them out to ensure they continue not getting their tax- and fare-payer\u2019s money\u2019s worth. Governor Hochul says the state will not raise taxes or fares to pay for the deal, but that\u2019s a matter of trust<\/a>.
And for complicated reasons, local Republicans are unlikely to help the public-spirited side of this intra-liberal-coalition fight. As I have noted before<\/a>, Republicans from New York tend to seek appeasement of organized labor rather than advancement of the Taft-Hartley consensus principles<\/a> upheld by (most of) the national party. (The consensus principle most relevant here is protection of the public from other people\u2019s labor disputes.) Longtime New York State Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno was an ally of 1199SEIU<\/a> in its quest to prevent the state government from controlling Medicaid costs. In the Congresses of the 1990s (and later the 2000s and 2010s), Long Island Rep. Pete King (R-NY) led the small bloc of pro-union Republicans, putting him at odds<\/a> with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich of right-to-work Georgia.
The Manhattan Institute has proposed<\/a> one policy that might not require help from the intransigent, appeasing local GOP but would require Gov. Hochul to channel her inner Harry Truman<\/a> (another pro-union Democrat with no time for extortionate rail strikes) to ensure this week\u2019s shutdowns never happen again. Thanks to the circumstances of LIRR\u2019s takeover by the state government, its workers have been covered by the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA), which allows strikes, and not the state\u2019s Taylor Law that covers other government workers, which does not permit strikes.
But there is reason to believe that the circumstances have changed to the point where the RLA should no longer apply. Ken Girardin of the Manhattan Institute explains<\/a>:
Much has changed over a century, and this exception should no longer apply. In 1966, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority absorbed the LIRR, making the railroad a public employer. In 1980, federal courts\u00a0rejected\u00a0an attempt to enforce New York\u2019s strike prohibition, in part because the LIRR was still hauling freight at that time. It no longer does.
Girardin recommends that Gov. Hochul sue to have the state\u2019s Taylor Law, and therefore its ban on strikes, given primacy over LIRR labor relations (as it is over New York\u2019s other state-run rail transportation). At the very least, such a reform would ensure that this week\u2019s strike would be the last (legal\u2014anti-strike laws are toothless without political leadership willing to enforce them<\/a>) strike on New York City public transportation.
Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to promote a better understanding of charity and philanthropy. We support the principles of individual liberty, a free market economy and limited constitutional government: These are the cornerstones of American society.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, five unions representing 3,500 railroad workers on the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) decided that they should shut down the commutes of roughly 300,000 New York City area commuters by striking against the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority. An agreement to end the strike was reached late Monday night, the details of which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}