It needs to be stressed, especially in moments of high confusion, what the rules are for a dynamic economy. These rules tend to fritter down under political pressure, but they are latently there, and the city of New York and United Airlines have both run into them.
The rules are, basically, that overhead costs have to be met by income. And that monopoly leverage over necessary public facilities is forbidden by law.
UAL sought, as so many commercial enterprises have done when in trouble, intervention by the government in order to circumvent the rule. UAL's petition was for a federally backed guarantee for a loan of $1.8 billion. The government said no. Government doesn't always say no. It said yes to Harley-Davidson nine years ago, and to Chrysler, and of course most recently to the steelworkers. But the government did the correct thing with UAL, which means that the company has to cope with market forces. That means, for the most part, the cost of machinists, pilots and flight attendants.
In New York City, the new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is providing the histrionic diversions expected of occupants of that theatrically prominent office in the theatrical capital of the republic. He speaks almost lasciviously about how to cope with a strike by the transit workers union; how by sharing space in your car or truck you can demonstrate that you too are involved in mankind. He speaks darkly about the ravages of a strike on everything people care about, an estimated $100 million per day in cost to the city's economy, a blight on Christmas shopping, and twice the normal time for the movement of ambulances and police cars.
The mayor would be free to go to work in a police car or helicopter. With perhaps memories of Mayor John Lindsay walking dramatically to work through unshoveled snow, Mr. Bloomberg says he will purchase a 10-speed bicycle to go to City Hall. It is not obvious where en route the 10th gear can be engaged, since it is unimaginable that the road ahead should ever be so clear as to make this possible. Perhaps he will have police cars stop the traffic until his bicycle reaches, at least, the fifth gear.
That there is no right to strike against the public interest was a rule endorsed by Grover Cleveland and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that rule is enacted in the Taylor Law of New York, which flatly prohibits exactly the thing that the Transport Workers Union is proposing to do.