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Headline of the Day: Public Sector Union Edition

Damon Root | 6.9.2010 11:20 AM


"Metrobus driver that punched McGruff the crime dog rehired"

That headline from today's Washington Examiner says a lot about the sorry state of public sector unionism in America. From the story:

A Metrobus driver fired after a deadly crash into a taxi and another canned for slugging a cop dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog are back at Metro, The Washington Examiner has learned.

Both men won their jobs back plus months of retroactive pay, the result of an arbitration decision between the bus drivers union and the transit agency. One driver is getting paid to sit at home while the agency determines where to place him. The other is expected to return to driving a Metrobus later this month.

"Neither of these incidents should have ever happened," Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said. The agency stands behind its decisions to fire the drivers, but Farbstein said Metro does not believe it has legal grounds to overturn the arbitrators' rulings.

Steven Greenhut explained how public servants became our masters in Reason's February issue.

(Via Josh Barro's Twitter feed.)

Damon Root is a senior editor at Reason and the author of A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution (Potomac Books).