BART unions give 72-hour courtesy strike notice

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

With the clock ticking on a Sunday night strike deadline for BART, transit system officials made a last-ditch plea Thursday for unions to delay any walkout plans.

"There's still enough time to come to a commonsense agreement," Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, told reporters at BART's Oakland headquarters. "No one wants a strike."

But union leaders issued a courtesy 72-hour notice Thursday night that they could walk off the job Monday when their 30 day contract extension ends if progress is not made at the negotiating table. Union officials said that doesn't mean a strike is inevitable and that negotiations will continue.

A walk-out would lead 400,000 BART riders scrambling for another way to get to work. BART already has reserved 96 private buses to provide very limited service from East Bay BART stations to and from San Francisco if some 2,400 union workers walk off the job. Running that service will cost the transit agency about $114,000 a day.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-unions-give-72-hour-courtesy-strike-notice-4702143.php

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What the hell, management? What kind of nest are they poking?

[Skeeter Barnes]

1. They are hoping the public will turn on the workers.

And they probably will. Plenty of DUers shit on them during the last strike.

Anyway, BART's own propaganda shows the Union has made concessions in the past.

In the past 12 years, BART's medical insurance costs have risen by 251 percent, from $24.6 million to an estimated $86.4 million next year, while workers' payments have increased from $25 to the current $92, BART officials said.

The increase in payments from the workers would wipe out the piddly 2% raise they would get under the proposed agreement so the Union is not being unreasonable or greedy as management would have us believe.

What is unreasonable is expecting the workers to give back on one contract after another. The workers and their Local need to win some of the time, too.

[Gormy Cuss]

14. It's working

Every poll that I've seen shows BART mgmt is winning the PR war.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-infuriates-unions-with-PR-blitz-4705210.php

[Skeeter Barnes]

22. Not surprised. Thanks for the link.

[cosmicone]

2. I don't shit on the BART union

but they have been tone deaf.

When PhDs are making $80K on average, it is hard to stomach people who control one switch and whose job is to simply remain awake get paid $155K a year plus overtime.

BART employees are NOT the downtrodden, disenfranchised, powerless, exploited workers that the unions are supposed to champion. The BART management is overpaid as well.

[Ash_F]

3. Holy cow, look at this post DU.

Just look at it.

[Skeeter Barnes]

4. I just got done typing and deleting three replies to it. I'd like to keep my posting privileges.

edited to add:

Look at the replies below the article. This is the liberal utopia known as San Francisco shitting all over Union workers.

I used to think people that did that really weren't liberals. Over the years, I've come to understand that this is what liberals are.

They are for the war if it's their guy waging it. They are for the strike, as long as it doesn't inconvenience them. They are for blue collar workers making better money, as long as it's not more than they make with their college degrees.

Republicans didn't make "liberal" a dirty word. The right leaning "centrist" liberals do it all by themselves every time they open their elitist mouths.

No wonder so many Democrats prefer to identify themselves as progressives these days.

[cosmicone]

8. Have you seen the BART contract?

The employees are allowed to not show up up to 40 days a year and if they show up another day of the week, they get overtime.

BART employees form teams ... so person A whose schedule is Monday through Friday will not show up on Monday but person B whose schedule is Tuesday through Saturday will. Person A then shows up on Saturday and gets overtime just as person B who shows up on Monday does. This is absolutely legal but outrageous.

I do respect unions and they have built the middle class, ending exploitation of the workers. Now, unions that have a grip on an area's testicles can get whatever they want and this must stop.

Hundreds of thousands of people who make far far less than BART workers will suffer from this. This is precisely why BART unions have almost no public support.

[Skeeter Barnes]

23. Post a link to the contract language.

[cstanleytech]

11. Yes, and ??????

You didnt exactly expand on it yourself Ash.
Example of what you could have asked the poster is they earn that much a year what do they do to earn it exactly? Surely the job just isnt flipping a simple switch?

Or you could have explained why you believe to earn that much money if the jobs really that simple that even a trained chimp (Bush in this case) could do it.

[alp227]

6. Hey i just found a similar sounding letter to the editor...

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_23785435/aug-3-readers-letters-bart-workers-pope-francis

I had a rude shock when I moved to the Bay Area in 1975. I was a freshly minted Ph.D. in physics and engineering from the University of Illinois, a top university. I landed a wonderful, well-paying job in the semiconductor industry. Then, much to my amazement, I found out that BART ticket takers with far less education and fewer responsibilities were earning up to 10 percent more than me, with benefits and pensions far better than mine (two weeks vacation, two weeks sick leave, 10 paid holidays, group health insurance, followed by Medicare, a pittance of Social Security and a small 401k upon retirement).

It was then I realized there is something very wrong with public employee compensation, benefits and pensions in the Bay Area. The members are grossly overcompensated because their unions have a stranglehold on the public, and because politicians are letting them get away with murder. The system is corrupt and exploits us taxpayers.

Coincidence? DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNN!

[cosmicone]

7. hahaha ... not me

I am in the pharmaceutical field and not a PhD ... although I work with a lot of them and most of them don't make as much as BART employees.

[Retrograde]

13. BART's Got Ticket Takers?

It's an automated system and was designed that way. Makes me wonder if the writer has ever used it.

Now, BART has a lot of problems with its management and overall approach to public transport (which seems to come down to fund BART and let the other regional agencies starve, the decision to use expensive, non-standard gauge cars, their annoying habit of pulling in to the Millbrae station just as the southbound CalTrain pulls out) but what it pays its workers is not one of them.

[davidpdx]

9. Seriously $155k

That must be for people who have been on the job decades.

[cosmicone]

10. BART salaries are on the web

"BART's top-paid train operator grossed $155,308, compared with the $109,450 that the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority paid its top light-rail driver. BART's best-paid janitor made $82,752 while the upscale Hillsborough City School District paid its top custodian $59,360. And BART's electrician with the highest paycheck made $149,957 -- nearly twice the $79,878 that AC Transit's best-paid electrician made.

The wages are under heightened scrutiny as BART and its labor unions on Tuesday enter their final week of negotiations, hoping to avert a second shutdown, Aug. 5, after a cooling-off period halted a 4½-day strike earlier this month. Both sides remain far apart on the key issues of worker pay and contributions to pensions and health care.

Overall, BART's average employee -- executives included -- made nearly $30,000 more than employees at Los Angeles' transit line, and nearly $10,000 more than those at San Francisco Muni, the state's second-highest paid transit workers."

Above from http://www.mercurynews.com/bart/ci_23742276/bart-workers-paychecks-already-outpace-their-peers

Here is the salary database: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay%20Area%20Rapid%20Transit

I have talked to dozens of people and there is ZERO support for the BART union even amongst very strong pro-union people. Only the most die-hard knee-jerk union supporters support the BART strike.

What the BART union is doing is pure extortion. They are already the highest paid (based upon the data) and want a 23% raise!!

[Posteritatis]

12. Of course there's no support. Just about everyone hates their town's transit unions.

That's hardly surprising; if any city's transit strikes even the pro-union crowd line up to crap all over them. "I'm pro-union, but these meanies are threatening to inconvenience me! They should get minimum wage because transit workers don't do work anyway!"

I also really like how you're specifically citing the top-paid staff here while a few posts above you were implying that their pay was the typical pay.

[Gormy Cuss]

17. 1. The 155K operator did that with tons of overtime.

Had management chosen to hire more operators none would have wages that high.

2. Calculating an average employee amount including executives is the oldest trick in the book for inflating compensation of union workers. It's right up there with listing average compensation (which includes the dollar value of benefits) rather than average wages.

And FWIW, the Merc is anti-labor.

eta:and I state all of this in spite of the fact that I'm going to be inconvenienced by the BART strike again.

[senseandsensibility]

21. Thanks for the info

I wish more would read it, and the Merc is very anti-labor, I agree.

[Skeeter Barnes]

24. Including health insurance and other benefits is how the GOP claimed

UAW workers all make $72/hour. Some worker hating Republican dirty tricks being posted right here on DU. Thanks for pointing out the lies.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. Airline pilots aren't downtrodden, powerless, exploited workers either...

thanks to strong union representation.

BTW,having a PhD doesn't confer automatic income supremacy over blue collar workers. I know lots of PhD, JDs, and other doctorate holders who make less than that. Some academic disciplines just don't translate into high paying jobs.

[KamaAina]

5. Absolute win from last month's strike

proposed on a disability listserv. Needless to say, people with disabilities who don't drive, and there are many of us, are SOL if they strike again.

But instead, why don't the union workers simply prop the fare gates open, not collect any fares, display big signs reading "Free rides on BART today, courtesy of the workers of Locals xxxx", and leaflet the stations to inform people why they're doing this?

Management freaks out over a sea of red ink (and presumably comes back to the table), the trains keep running, and best of all, public opinion tilts back toward the workers.

[Gormy Cuss]

16. That would be illegal

but I really like your idea.

[brooklynite]

18. So, BART loses revenue...

and since BART is a public agency and doesn't have "profits", it has to make up that revenue to balance it budget. So it raises fares. And public opinion supports this?

[Ash_F]

19. Because they would go to prison?

Do you think they wouldn't if they tried that?

[MADem]

20. They should strike like Italians.

The Italians just strike for a few hours, go back to work, then strike for a few hours. They inconvenience people, but not mightily.

It's an interesting tension.