Two Strikes Are More Than Enough

I took a break from posting as I was in Los Angeles over the weekend visiting family. What was a beautiful weekend at first turned smoky as a dozen blazes started up in the hills around the city and in Malibu. The Kashan Castle that I drove by Saturday night was burned to the ground only a few hours later. As we were staying in West Hills, the family was worried about another fire coming close to the house as it had done only two years ago. The firefighters over there are fantastic as I remembered they were saving the house in 2005, but now they are stretched thin as the humidity in So Cal is in the single digits.

Needless to say, I was glad to come back to more humid air without massive smoke plumes here in NYC. However, we were greeted with the taxi strike. A few cabbies were screaming and yelling at those that decided to work today despite the second strike in a month's time. Even though they gave a few good reasons (pensions, etc) after a while, the real concern is still having to install GPS trackers in their cars.

Bhairavi Desai and his New York Taxi Workers Alliance is claiming some sort of victory this morning, but I managed to hail a cab near Penn Station in about two minutes by dodging the taxi stand line. As the AM NY reporter mentioned, there are tons of cabs operating this morning, so there really is nothing to fear if you need to hail a yellow cab.

I am sticking to my position as I have over the last couple of months. While Desai and others complain that GPS trackers are an invasion of privacy, the real issue is accountability. Plenty of businesses use certain methods to hold their employees accountable and if cabbies don't like it, they should find something else to do. There are plenty of drivers out there today that do not care whether or not they are being watched while on the clock. If the GPS units were being used when they are off-duty, that would be another matter.