way to stand up for principle

the ny transit strike appears over.

while there appear to be a few sympathetic voices who lazily bring up race and class in their apologist accounts. time even brought up the shakespearean "pound of flesh" regarding negotiations.

however, the ny post's ryan sanger takes another view in terms of class

[T]ere is a class confrontation of a kind going on — but it's not between rich and poor. It's between the working class and what might be called the government-worker class.
The gap between the two groups has been growing for a while.
The private sector has been groaning under rising health and pension costs for years....
Yet the benefits for public-sector workers keep getting fatter and fatter.
The reason is fairly simple. While only 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized these days, some 40 percent of public-sector workers are unionized. And while the rigors of the free market forced private companies to become more efficient, the government faces no such constraints.
Instead, pliant politicians simply give the unions whatever they want, driving up health and pension costs — and sticking taxpayers (the ones trudging over the Brooklyn Bridge this week) with the bill.

the strike was essentially well-compensated workers taking an illegal action to garner even better compensation.

i don't believe the workers got the better of the pr war.

as for standing up for a principle involving public transportion, this action falls only about a little short of a truly principled action