The Pizza Principle

When I was 15, I got a job as a dishwasher at Filippi's Pizza.  I made minimum wage, and the work sucked.  Yet I still loved working, and I also loved one of the perks:  free pizza and pasta when working.  This principle, call it the pizza principle, applies at work everywhere.  It is understood that employees get discounts, and in some industries employees get freebies.  Everyone understands that.  Everyone, that is, except Governor Christie of New Jersey.

For at least the last 40 years, employees at PATCO, which operates the trains between New Jersey and Philadelphia, received a free train pass as part of their employment package.  And, about 15 years ago, employees were given a certain number of free bridge passes.  This is just the pizza principle applied to public transportation; virtually every train and bus system in the country gives this perk to its employees.

But then last summer a management employee making nearly $175,000 a year got caught giving a colleague's EZ-Pass toll to his daughter.  There was public outrage, and in response to that (plus intense criticism of the Delaware River Port Authority, PATCO's parent company, for lots of questionable spending) the DRPA revoked every employee's free train and bridge pass.  It's a classic management strategy -- someone at the top screws up and spending is out of control, so it gets taken out on the little guy.  Governor Christie explained that "members of the public don't get free passes, so why should the DRPA employees."

The Unions representing the affected employees took the case to arbitration, including a union I represent, Teamsters Local 676.  In a resounding rebuke to the DRPA, the arbitrator ruled that the DRPA had violated clear contract language, and also had violated a past practice between the parties.


The Arbitrator noted in the decision that "the Employer cannot walk away from its solemn obligations under the collectively bargained agreements.  The language of the agreements establishes, without reservation, that the Employer's action of not granting the benefits violated the terms of the agreements and well-established, well-utilized past practices."

The decision is well-written and reasoned, and the unions won based on basic contract law.  Governor Christie's obsession with government spending seems to apply only to working folks and people other htan himself.  It was obvious to anyone with even a hint of labor relations that what the DRPA did was wrong and unlawful.  Yet the parties had to spend thousands of dollars at arbitration, and the DRPA is going to have to spend thousands more to reimburse employees who had to pay for bridge and rail travel -- and this is a real dollar cost, unlike the free passes, which do not require any fiscal outlay.  More to the point, if the Governor had thought for more than a second about the pizza principle, the whole mess could have been avoided.