Leftinsfer Saskia Traill gets the transportation award for arranging carpools for all her co-workers from San Francisco to her Oakland office over the next week. She arranged four carpools for tomorrow alone (and just ask her about the ferry ride with Arizmendi scones on Thursday).
Yep. We are all waiting on pins and needles to find out what will happen at midnight. Will there be a BART strike? All day long I have been predicting there would be a strike to all that ask. I work for the union that represents the BART workers so I have been fielding calls all day from friends who know this and are trying to make plans for tomorrow.
We had a staff meeting this morning and the outlook doesn’t look good.
What hasn’t materialized in the discourse yet, and perhaps never will, is that BART management has a bad rep in the transportation community. Folks from the MTC often complain about how poorly BART management is running one of the best systems in the country. And how poorly they are negotiating…
Update: Just checked the BART chapter hotline and they are going back to the bargaining table at 3AM. I’m checking out since I have to wake up early and go to a rally in the East Bay at 7:30 AM. If they reach an agreement, it will be while we rest.
The Latest:
The BART strike deadline passed at 1:30 a.m., but workers stayed on the job as union leaders and the transit agency’s management negotiated into the early morning hours today, leaving Bay Area commuters unsure whether they would wake up to traffic gridlock or an ordinary commute.
Art Pulaski, the executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, said union leaders stopped the clock at the original deadline of midnight Tuesday to wait for management to respond to a new contract offer. Pulaski said BART’s 2,300 unionized workers were set to walk out at 1:30 a.m. if there wasn’t a deal.
After the 1:30 deadline, BART spokesman Linton Johnson told reporters, “We’re very close to something,” not indicating whether he meant a strike or a settlement.
The first trains for the morning commute were scheduled to start running shortly after 4 a.m.
Last Update: No strike! Here is to the amazing member leadership in the BART chapter, a leadership that fought back against untenable demands by an employer. This fight was one of the most serious attacks by an
employer on our union and in all of those areas that mattered the most, we prevailed.
July 6th, 2005 at 12:53 am
BART Strike Update (Black Wednesday)
Well, as I write this, the 12:01 “Strike Deadline” set by the BART workers’ unions has come and gone. The negotiations have continued through the night to this point, and according to the report I just heard on KGO News Radio 810, ri…
July 6th, 2005 at 10:25 am
Fascinating… I really can’t fathom the filter through which you perceive BART management’s “demands” as “untenable.” Perhaps you can say more about that. What seems untenable to most of us out here in the Bay Area public is BART’s union workforce of less than 3,000 holding a gun to the heads of millions of Bay Area residents in order to further boost an already super-generous 100K+ average worker wage and benefits package.
And now the unions were seeking 30% MORE pay? And refused to take on more of the share of rising health care costs? This really seems selfish and counter-productive to the whole purpose of what BART is supposed to be about (getting people out of their cars).
Many economically-aware people already know that unions are inherently problematic organizations:
http://www.mises.org/story/1861
And with the kind of attitude exhibitied by the BART unions this time around, I think we may finally be getting close to a tipping point regarding public employee unions in the Bay Area.
I certainly hope so.
~r
http://thegoldengate.net
July 6th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Yeah. You and Schwarzenegger… Most rich folks do know that unions are inherently problematic organizations since they get in the way of exploitation…
As to BART,
From 2000 to 2005, BART cut the maintenance and clerical units by 7%, while they’ve
increased the ranks of management more than 5%.
And now they wanted to reduce maintenance and clerical
by another 3.2%.
It had come to the point where the safety of the system was being impacted…And we know from data that the District has provided that there were 47 vacant budgeted positions in the management and administrative ranks, which lead us toquestion why, once again, the District was targeting frontline workers for elimination.
July 6th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
I see — so workers get “exploited” absent unions. I think you are grossly underestimating the intelligence and resourcefulness of working people.
And for the record, I am “rich” in name only. I am somebody who is interested in the conversation about what is fair and what works.
And here are some futher thoughts on that matter:
“The moral value/justice of your post hinges on the concept “fair.”
However, the meat of your post has to do with “lifestyle.”
If the jobs at BART were paid equivalent to jobs that require equal skill in the private sector, they would not start at 50-60k. It is ONLY because they are government jobs, with unions, that they pay so WELL. YOUR friends might not be clamoring for 50-60k jobs, but take away the union bullshit/requirements, and BART would be able to get tons of equally qualified applicants willing to work for less (not your friends).
Is it “fair” to have the BART passengers and other commuters PAY (it will cost them money and time) so that BART employees can inflate their ALREADY above market level wages beyond what they already are, leading to higher taxes and higher fees to ride BART?
Fair? To whom?
Remember, every time we privilege some group with legistlation (i.e., guns/physical force), we must marginalize another. When we give over 13.5 billion dollars in subsidies to farmers (in 2003 alone, not counting the 3 billion in “emergency relief”), we 1) take that 13.5 billion dollars from other people/parts of the economy, and 2) raise the prices of food for EVERYONE. Yes, the farmers who received the subsidies and price-fixing are benefited – no doubt. I’m sure there are those who feel that this is “fair” because they “should/deserve to” make a “good” living. Shit, I think they should be rich! I think everybody “should.” Wouldn’t that be nice?
However, reality does not recognize our “shoulds.” It operates on principles that completely ignore our personal opinions. When we manipulate prices/wages in one area it has profound effects on EVERYONE. When we unbalance one part of the equation, other parts must rebalance themselves. If we add to one part of the equation, we must subtract from another. (Imagine saving 13 billion dollars in taxes and having lower food costs…whom would benefit from this?)
Most importantly, when we do this through government activity/legislation, we are doing it with force. All laws/regulations, no matter how “good” their intention, are implemented at the point of a gun.
Is that use of force “fair” to the part of the equation that is unbalanced? Is that fair to the people who have the skills and desire but don’t want to deal the union bullshit? Is it fair to the consumers who would prefer to purchase the products/services that get eliminated through such unbalancing?
For example, my father decided to retire last week because California just passed a law that you MUST be part of the electrical workers union to be recognized as legitimate. So, to keep his jobs and stay competetitive/alive in the market, he joined. In the first couple months of being part of the union, he has been forced to deal with so much union “padding” and “pressure,” that he no longer feels like the boss of his own company (which he has owned for 30 years). When it came down to it, he felt his best choice was to simply quit and close his business.
Society has just lost a master electrician (my father was respected and revered as extraordinary at what he does – I mean did), and my father has lost the ability to perform his art according to his conscience.
Of course, the union electricians and shops (ALL of whom were “grandfathered” into the deal) have essentially eliminated their competition through the new law. Also, they have seniority over all the people who have just been forced to join the union. They get the best jobs, the best promotions, and benefits. The new members even pay dues to support the existing members increasing “bennies.” Ain’t that just sweet? And, of course, we all know that unions are known for their ethical and exemplary political/fiscal activities… HAH!
The union lobby just FUCKED all the non-union electricians is the ass with a BIG, ROUGH a government-issued dildo with no lube, and the government bent them over at the point of a gun to either take it or quit.
Is the increase in the already inflated lifestyle of union electricians at the cost of men like my father “fair?”
Again, if we make our personal “shoulds” the basis of “fair,” whoever has sufficient political power to unbalance the equation gets to determine what we “should” do and what is thereby “fair.” I prefer letting “reality/each person’s choices/the market” balance the equation, rather than corrupt bureaucrats and lobbyists. If the BART employees really wanted “fair,” they would dissolve the union and open themselves to competition. Of course, they wouldn’t do that, because they know that thousands of people would jump at the chance to do their jobs for less money. WHY? you figure it out.
Last, I want to be clear that I support people’s right to organize. I do not support government support of that organization. Union’s can justly picket, but they cannot violate/abridge the rights of any other members of society who disagree with them, ESPECIALLY “scabs.” If the unions can garner public support through reason, they are valid. If they revert to physical force and intimidation, they become part of the problem, not the cure. If they enlist a government to do the force/intimidation for them, that does not change the immorality, injustice, and ugliness of the issue.”
July 6th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
If every industry that has high unionization rates, workers have higher wages and benefits, something I believe in and support. By setting good standards on wages and benefits, we life everyone up.
As for govt. intervention, typicall the government is intervening on behalf of the employer, protecting the scabs or the employer.
I appreciate that you dad had a bad experience, but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
July 6th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
A counterpoint to your assertion, Robert, from
http://www.mises.org/story/1861 (read the whole thing)
“The actual effects of labor unions are arbitrary inequalities in wage rates, mass unemployment, and substantially lower real wages for the average worker. Labor unions are aptly described as a leading vehicle of what von Mises called “destructionism.”
Whenever a union succeeds in obtaining above market wage rates for its members, it also reduces the number of workers who can be employed in its field. This is because of the operation of one of the best established principles of economics: Namely, the higher the price of anything, including the wage of any kind of labor, the smaller is the quantity demanded of that good or labor service.
Thus, workers who could have been employed in the lines controlled by labor unions are instead displaced and forced to seek work elsewhere. The added competition of these workers in other lines then serves either to depress wage rates in those other lines, thereby resulting in an arbitrary, union-imposed inequality in wage rates, or, if those other lines are also unionized or are forced to pay union wages in order to avoid becoming unionized (which is often the case), to cause still other workers to be displaced. It should be clear that to the extent that the effect of union activity is to depress wage rates in other fields, the union slogan “Live Better, Work Union” turns out to mean “Live Better by Forcing Other Workers to Live Worse.””