Response by President Richard Davis to the WSJ's editorial attacking RTO A Division Pick.

When the Wall Street Journal attacks me, you know we are doing something right. The issue this week was our arbitration win on the RTO A Division Pick — a decision that protects the livelihoods of our Conductors and Train Operators. 
 
In its March 3 editorial, the Journal says that Local 100 believes that "the idea of workers changing their shift schedules was too much to bear." It quotes me accurately as saying that the new schedules would be "chaotic and problematic."
 
First off, TWU Local 100 has been fighting for more service — and against the service cuts on Mondays and Friday that NYCT wanted to impose. That's rush hour service that delivers workers to midtown office locations and other places — which the Wall Street Journal should be expected to cheer.
 
Second, the Journal misjudges transit workers. We are not complainers — we are defenders of our negotiated rights. The lifeblood of our City's economy — the transit system — which brings between $440 million and $660 million in economic benefits per day to the City (those are the numbers cited by the Journal during the 2005 strike) is a delicate balancing act between labor and management. It works because of negotiations, arbitrations, and contracts going back over 85 years. IB Image
 
And these agreements are the foundation of why New York City Transit works as well as it does. The obligations of transit workers to their families and their right to have some say over their work schedules are not trivial matters. The fact that the Journal doesn't respect that speaks volumes about how it views working people.
 
— Richard Davis, President