If we weren't on the side of the transit workers already in New York (because they have, as we all know, hard jobs, lousy working conditions and a horrendously dishonest employer which has been screwing the riders out of fare increases by hiding surplusses) supporters of the MTA would be doing wonders to move us to their side

As the 34,000-member Transport Workers Union (TWU) edged closer to a strike that would close the nation's largest bus-and-subway system, many conductors and track workers, token booth clerks and bus drivers have spoken with a voice seldom heard these days in New York. This city tends to be viewed through the gold-leafed windows of Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn, where the median income is twice that of the rest of the city and jobs come with white collars, where three-bedroom apartments sell for more than $1 million and several dozen restaurants open each month.

As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, himself a billionaire, put it a few years back, New York is a luxury item -- and residents, he suggested, happily pay for the pleasure of living here.

But the transit workers' voice is that of median-income New Yorkers, the millions who make $40,000 to $60,000 a year and who are ever more hard-pressed. Middle-class incomes in New York, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a labor-funded group, have declined by 11.9 percent relative to inflation in the past 13 years.

By contrast, incomes for the top-fifth of New York earners have increased by 26 percent. Inflation runs close to 5 percent in the city, and housing prices have shot up 85 percent. Few middle- and working-class families can afford to buy a home or apartment, even in the most far-flung neighborhoods.

The economic anxiety is palpable.

"The MTA needs to take it on the chin," said Pedro Sanchez, 36, a bus driver from Queens. He told his family last week that he might be fined if he strikes. He sucked in his breath quickly and said that's all right with him. "I've got some savings."

Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the buses and subway trains, and some budget analysts argue that the transport workers occupy a privileged island in a middle-class sea. Transit workers receive generous, employer-paid pension and health benefits.

Such benefits are becoming more rare. In New York, once a bastion of unionized labor, only 55 percent of private-sector workers receive health benefits, a figure that is lower than the national average.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a business-funded think tank, released a recent analysis suggesting that transit workers are too well paid and that the MTA should take a strike to restore fiscal order. The commission's analysts noted that many thousands of New Yorkers probably would accept less pay in exchange for transit jobs; 30 people now apply for every train operator's job.

"They live in one of the most expensive cities in the country, but their wages are not substandard," said Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director at the commission. "The only requirement is that they converse fluently in English. They are fairly compensated . . . and maybe too high."

Isn't that cute? A woman who earns a healthy upper-class salary as an "academic" figleaf for businesses (which get very prayerful consideration indeed from Mayor Bloomberg, as, for instance, shorting the "cash-strapped" MTA a few hundred million dollars on premium land to hand a pourboire to the owner of a sports team) thinks that middle-class new yorkers doing hard physical labor deserve less money because they're not a single illness away from the street.

You'd also want to remember that the last round of city contract negotiations were later found to have been slightly tilted on behalf of the city when the head of DC37, whose contract set the contract levels for all the city unions, was found to have stuffed the ballot box for ratification in return for certain considerations from that fragrant soul Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Bloomberg later gave large concessions to their current leadership in return for an endorsement in the last election, proving that some things are more important than putting unions in their place.

See, we nyawkas who, you know, vote and use the subways? The ones outside the gold coast of Manhattan? The ones who significantly outnumber you? We love that shit. We also love the idea that you're gonna bring scabs who "converse fluently in english" in to run the largest and most complicated transit system in the world if the workers obdurately refuse to get screwed.

But more than anything, we love that Mr. Bloomberg is going to throw this city into gridlock to save a fraction of what he paid out of his own pocket to get reelected. His suggestion to the teeming masses is that we get bikes.

The city is covered in ice. We most of us live a river away, with the exception of Staten Islanders, who would have to cross two rivers to get to work. The streets are going to be covered in wall-to-wall cars of people who don't generally take their cars into Manhattan, because no-one sane takes their car into Manhattan if they have a choice. Even our mayor takes the train to City Hall (where the plushy car and driver live) because a police escort means jackshit on the east side during rush hour.

You folks appear to be counting on the fact that a strike will inconvenience us.

Please believe me when I tell you that for many of us, that fact is significantly outweighed by the fact that it's inconveniencing you.

And we'd really, really like to see you get your asses kicked.

and Mayor Mike? Dude? My family has been living here since the eighteen hundreds. Please to not be discussing how new yorkers feel as though you weren't a carpetbagger living in a hermetic bubble of money and trying to rearrange the greatest city in the world so it's a reflection of your own vulgar soul. Thank you.