Make Them An Offer They Can't Refuse

It suddenly hit me today--we're going about this all wrong.

Why are we debating about contracts, or whether we need an iconoclastic leader, or good old, reliable Unity? They won't get us what we want.

For many years, we'd heard and read about the custodians' union, and how corrupt it was, and how overpaid they were. They were buying jeeps for their personal use on the city's dime. They were working on their yachts in Long Island when they were supposed to be mopping a floor. They were painting not one inch above 7 feet, because union regs forbade it.

And you'd read about their union heads getting rubbed out on the street over who knows what. Was it true? What's the difference?

Naturally, I abhor violence. But why can't we have a mobbed-up union boss? And please don't lecture me about discrimination, because mobs now come from all over. I've got nothing against Asian, Russian, or South American mobs in our corner. Race is not an issue, and it's utterly beside the point. One mobster is as good as another, say I.

Why bother with PERB? Who needs a bunch of lawyers sitting with calculators figuring how many half minutes we need to add to our days?

We need someone getting us jobs that people really want to have. Do you remember the Sopranos episodes with the dozen guys sitting on lawn chairs at the construction site? Why should Tweed get all the no-show jobs?

"Nice little City Hall you've got here. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it." Mayor Bloomberg is a businessman, and if that isn't a call to negotiate, I don't know what is. It beats the hell out of waiting till election time, showing him an unsavory ad we paid to produce, and threatening to drain even more millions from our coffers showing it around town.

Screw the cutesy television commercials that say how hard we work and how unappreciated we are. They cost us bazillions in dues, and just make the Daily News that much more vicious when decrying the perfidy of teachers.

While I certainly would never teach my students to leave a decapitated horse's head on the pillow of an uncooperative employer, why shouldn't we send some hearty soul to Mayor Mike's upstate horse farm to let him know we mean business? Even a very highly-paid individual would cost a fraction of what we pay for an ineffectual TV campaign.

I ask you--is it too much to ask the forces of corruption to align themselves with us for a change?