Here in Kansas they installed a machine at one end of the highway that gives you your ticket...still have to pay a real live person at the other end, though...

Has any strike against job losses EVER been successful? I doubt it. The logic is inescapable.. if the way things are done now is inefficient, making it more inefficient is not going to help. Yet still it happens: Jaguar workers in the English Midlands are about to strike because their factory is to be closed down!

Strikes for better pay and conditions or on safety can work: that's part of the market and can take the form of useful suggestions for the management, eg, saving money in the long run in recruitment or legal costs. A recent, devastatingly effective (threat of) strike on such grounds was that of UK judges: They demanded an exemption on a pensions tax for pensions over £1.5m and were immediately given it. Judge = more valuable than toll-booth operative.

These people don't know the first thing about striking. Take it from the French: The way to conduct a proper highway strike is to close the highway entirely when you leave.

Those $2 tolls were nice if you're driving all the way across the state (like I was on Thursday and Sunday), but if you're only driving one exit, they suck!

Taking tolls cannot be a good job -- surly drivers, freezing temperatures, auto fumes, and so on -- so I have some sympathy for the strikers, but as you said above, it's not one with a future. They're striking for a job that won't be around in 10 years.

"My young friend, you need to get into a career that has a future."

That's the problem, isn't it -- what career has a "future"? Ten years ago, I bet toll-taker seemed like a better choice than it does today (I see a lot of middle-aged people taking tolls, not just young men).

I'm 32 and I'm entry-level again, having just switched careers for a third time. Each career had a "future" -- at the time.

I think labor organization is more important to laborers than ever, because there's often no time to work your way up in a stable career anymore before it's obsolete.

Instead, workers are entry-level all the time, as career paths disappear and pop up every couple years. But if they bargain collectively, then when a workforce like, say, the high-tech workforce, has to go retrain, they can come back after training with some leverage. That would help them avoid being treated like entry-level workers eacy time.

Of course, nobody who likes the idea of making a killing off a desperate, permanent, entry-level workforce of people trying their darndest to find that "career with a future" is going to agree with that.

Just in reference to Eric's comment on the EZ-Pass devices: in southern California, we have FastTrack transponders for the toll roads. You simply place the device (it's about the size of one of those coaster-shaped buzzers they give you when waiting for a table in restaurants) on your dashboard and drive. When you pass by one of the toll stations, it ticks off the dollar amount from your car and you don't even have to slow down from the posted 65 or 70 mph speed limit. When you run out of toll money, you simply use your credit card to recharge it. It's the easiest way I've ever seen to use the toll roads. Hopefully they'll soon decide to use those out where you are Eric.

but I expect in 10 years I'll be able to enter and exit the turnpike just like any other interstate highway, and only out-of-staters and luddite types will queue up to hand cash to a human being.

Chicago's EZ pass lanes are already up to 30-50MPH, frequently leaving only one or two (sometimes none) booths manned with actual people.

Ah, well hopefully PA will be like CA or Chicago sooner rather than later.

I also expect that in the near future, EZ-pass type devices will allow drivers to automatically pay for everything from parking garage costs to drive-through food orders. That'll be sweet.