Muni inspectors and dispatchers went all French yesterday and called a sickout. Their union, the Transport Workers Union, Local 200, is currently in contract negotiations with the Powers that Be and obviously it's not going as they are hoping. Basically, an arbitrator went in and set the terms of the contract and the Union is not very happy with it. Thus the sickout.

Union officials say it was all just some coincidence that a bunch of people called in sick (there are several bugs going around which we can verify as being somewhat nasty and involving incessant coughing) even though a flyer was circulated a day before from the union saying the negotiations were kinda going sucky. And hey, if you're going to schedule a sickout, why not do it on a Friday instead of Thursday? Three words: three-day weekend.

MTA officials and the Mayor are not amused by all this and threatening "appropriate action" if it is discovered the union had something to do with it. Gavin also added that there's an appropriate way to do something like this that doesn't involve a bunch of people not showing up for work.

Despite the sickout, Muni was able to scramble so service wasn't disrupted yesterday. Of course, it’s not like anyone can really tell anyway.