Its scary and disgusting at the same time.
How dare workers make 60k in the Bay Area, where median home prices are over 500k- WTF is going on?
I am sick and tired of people with agendas lumping Overtime pay with base pay. It shouldn't factor into base pay, Overtime is paid because it is cheaper for BART to pay overtime rather than hire more workers.
Sure the workers get pensions, but it takes decades before you get one dime of that pension, and the way things are going nationwide, there is no guarantee that the pension will be there when they retire in decades.
Read these two articles and get back to me once things simmer down.
BART Strike: Another Instance of Media Portraying Workers as Greedy
Chris Daly was a clarion voice for progressive values while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2000-2010. Now, as political director of Service Employee International Union Local 1021, one of the BART unions, he says this standoff is about more than just the issues being discussed at the bargaining table.
"The terms and conditions of workers in the public sector is a buoy for other workers," Daly told us, explaining how everyone's wages and benefits tend to follow the gains and setbacks negotiated by unions. "The right understands this, which is why the right has been mercilessly attacking public sector workers."
Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, confirmed that union contracts affect the overall labor market. "When unions improve wages and benefits, it does have a ripple effect," Jacobs said. He agreed that the outcome at BART could be a bellwether for the question, "As the economy comes back, how much will workers share in that prosperity?"
Demonizing public sector workers as greedy or lazy also serves to undercut the entire labor movement, Daly said, considering that public employees make up a far higher percentage of union members than their private sector counterparts. And during election time, it is union money and ground troops that typically contest wealthy individuals and corporations' efforts to maintain or expand power.
"Labor is one of the main checks on unbridled corporate power, and public sector unions are the backbone of labor," Daly told us.
http://www.sfbg.com/...
http://www.thenation.com/...