Talking about how transit workers should “just be happy to have a job” turns this into an argument between people making $20,000 a year and people making $50,000 a year. Yet, even after his much-touted pay cut, Nutter still takes $167,000 a year for being mayor, not considering investments and assets. The top earner in the city, David L. Cohen the VP of Comcast took home $22,000,000 last year, up two percent from the year before. He made enough to settle the difference in the contract negotiations. Not everyone is sacrificing equally. Instead those making a little are told ‘no one should ask for anything in these trying times’ as if they were taking from those making even less. …
Nutter takes it upon himself to speak for all the people across the city. “People have lost their jobs, they’ve lost their pensions, they’ve lost their healthcare, and most are just happy to have a job.” This is a clear case of Nutter trying to turn the working commuters and the unemployed against the drivers and engineers of SEPTA, as if it’s the workers’ fault that the economy is where it is. Slashing good contracts and forcing workers to negotiate away their benefits is a political decision that worsens the financial crisis, not improves it.
