Yeah anything short of meeting the strikers demands is insane. I still can't believe that's not what went down. These are possibly some of the most important workers in the country, and they can't even get sick days.
It sure does seem weird that something as fundamentally efficient as trains are supposedly so hard to run economically that treating workers properly just isn't economically feasible.
Of course it is feasible, but the transit corps are only interested in maximizing profit and the government backs them up. They could run these trains with 10x the crew, with full top-tier benefits, and still turn a sustainable profit. But right now these companies are being run as paperclip maximizers and merely sustainable profit isn't good enough for them.
Capital always behaves this way, it isn't really surprising. What's embarrasing is the federal government and the news coverage making it seem like the strike was a huge risk and the only way to deal with it was to forcibly silence them when the obvious solution is to meet their demands. It's like such a thing never crossed their minds, and it's nuts.
