How much do BART Employees make?
bartmusings.blogspot.com
bartmusings.blogspot.com
Full disclosure: I'm a government worker.
The unions force people who are fine with their job to stop working while the reps fight for more money or something. The unions hold entire segments of people hostage when they go on strike. Some are less visible than others. Back in 1989, some Boeing unions went on strike and no one really noticed because regular people aren't out buying airplanes everyday. I only noticed because my step mom had to stop going to work because the union said to. But BART shutting down effects hundreds of thousands of Bay Area people that just want to get to their own job. We noticed this one.
really?
"or something?" that's your argument here?
We have a constitutional right to strike in the united states. Getting mad at people who get paid less than you for exercising that right--only because it disrupts your pampered existence-- is the height of selfishness.
Let me set you straight: Unions vote on striking. It is not the leadership who decides. So the workers who are indeed taking a pay cut for what they believe is right, made this decision. They had been without pay raises for 5 years.
Assumptions that "anyone" can do the job are not based in reality, but a sense of arrogance that the people who do the jobs are somewhat beneath the gods of programming.
Really, sometimes the ignorance displayed on hacker news is embarrassing to me as person proud to work in an industry that usually prizes intelligence.
But let me set you straight on something: I said "fight for more money or something" as in some thing other than money... like more vacation, more benefits, etc. They are fighting for more money or some other thing that is not money. And it is the reps that do the fighting. I don't think the entire union votes at the bargaining table. So I am not sure why you took offense to that argument.
I am mad at the extortion that unions use to get what they want rather than individuals getting what they deserve based on their work product. If you truly deserve a raise after 5 years, you should request/receive one. You shouldn't have to have a union do that for you. You should get it based on your performance and the health of the company like most people do. And if you don't (and don't like it), you can suck it up or find another job like most people do.
And, yes, unions do vote to strike. But not everyone votes "yes" so you can have many people forced to strike when they don't want to.
The rest of your post assumes things I never said or thought. so... ya. Also, no need to attack me with condescension and call me ignorant. But since you did, I'll just disregard everything you said. Cool?
It would have been interesting to read the discussion of you two getting to the root of why you hold such different beliefs about unions.
For most people "getting another job" isn't an option. Have you ever lived outside the bay area? Do you know what's happening in small towns all over america? What do 40 something factory workers with a high school diploma do in central Arkansas? What does a 50 year old BART train operator do in the Bay Area? Yes we shouldn't need unions, but we do. And the majority of workers do vote, and that's what being part of union is. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I guess those in the union who don't like the union can "suck it up and find another job like most people do, too."
Yes, your comment "...or something" is an idiom that is derisive. It belies either your ignorance or laziness about the subject at hand. If you intended otherwise, you should have said that in the first place.
Also, I've never heard a tech worker tell another tech worker that "they're overpaid." No, we all fight as hard as we can for what we have, and we should. And so should everyone else. But not everyone has the background, intelligence, training, or leverage to do so. Which most programmers will find out when Peter Thiel gets those offshore programming sweatshops going...
But well, it is just a hand.
So you can clearly see that the problem is in the value you are adding to something, even if it is intellectual, manual or artistic. How much value can we appreciate with the BART for its current cost?
Why does a customer service rep make over $110k? Because the city/state/agency allowed for work rules that strictly assigns overtime based in seniority and only seniority.
Why is there so much overtime? Because the agency doesn't maintain an adequate staffing level and doesn't improve productivity via technical means, hire more people, or supplement with temps. Probably because somebody in 1990 gave away the store to the union.
In New York, people are always bitching about police OT and loaded pensions. NY made things especially expensive because police and fire unions are entitled to mandatory binding arbitration. So the unions ask for 20%, and the city/town/etc say 5%. The arbitrator says 10% raise with free healthcare forever.
- Customer Service Clerk: 61k cash, 85k TCOE
- A-Line Train operator: Hard to say, because the range goes from 7k cash to 122k (although half of that high number was overtime). It looks like the lowest paid operator that's probably full time is around 40k cash, 74k TCOE
- Elevator worker: I couldn't find this job, but a "maintenance engineer" is 68k Cash, 106 TCOE.
I think people are mainly annoyed that BART workers want big raises when the system works so poorly. If all the escalators worked and the maintenance guys could stop crashing their shit into each other in the middle of the tube, then maybe we could talk.
(1) Number of humans or Volume of humans plus accessories waiting at the platform. (2) Duration until next train (3) Historical business for that station at that time of day on that day of the week (4) Historical figures of the number/volume of humans that enter and exit the train at that time of day on that day of the week.
But what if you look at it from a slightly different angle. First, these workers work in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country. Second, they work for a critical piece of infrastructure. You only have to look at the havoc one day of them being off has caused. Third, public transportation is generally valued more highly here than in other places for a variety of reasons.
Oh, and I overheard on KQED this morning that the base pay is $71,000, which is high, but not astronomical.
I think unions served a purpose in the past, and hopefully still do now, but honestly once you look at the overtime pay it's painful.
http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2012
p.s. Some dude took a stab at liberating the data further, but it could use some work. http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/BARTsalaries/BARTsal...
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/01/bart-workers-off...
Use IIRC or AFAIK when you remember something, but don't remember exactly or cite a source for anything stated as fact.
In other places, some mass transit systems are at least partially automated.
Safe Automated BART Train Controls Doubted (1972)
Legislative Analyst A. Alan Post expressed doubt Tuesday that a $36 million automated
train control system for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District can be made "fail safe" to
adequately protect its passengers."
It's only political inertia, in my opinion, which keeps things manned (and womanned). I suspect that even as Google cars take off in popularity and prove their safety, public transit will resist and insist that drivers who are susceptible to weariness, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, disease, etc. are still the safer to steer buses through our streets.
Third, public transportation is generally valued more highly here than
in other places for a variety of reasons.
That line of reasoning is utter bunk.
I don't mean to dispute, but I don't understand this. I had thought that it was impossible that the US' military could be worth the $682 billion per year the US spends on it, that it was a sinecure for contractors. At >1.4 million active personnel, you're talking a value of hundreds of trillions, at least 10x the US GDP. The military is only useful as a threat deterrent and threat defense, what threat could possibly justify that?
I guess the moral is that people shouldn't try to be cute when using metric prefixes.
They also, on average, get a $50,000/year benefits package, including a fixed-benefit pension. Plus paid overtime. That's not high, or astronomical, it's absolutely outrageous.
(Assuming you live in America, that is.)
Not much else to say, just wanted to point out that the decision to strike is not taken lightly by any union. The potential downside is huge.
It is also hard to even hire temps. They must cross the (sometimes aggressive) picket line, get called names (like scab), etc. Then there is the chance that the would-be temps are also in a union and therefore unable/unwilling to take the temp job.
There was that one time that all the striking air traffic controllers got canned and permanently replaced[2]. But that was federal and Pres. Reagan got in on it. So that is not likely to be an option with BART.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion [2] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12292.html
Wow. One of the factors contributing to the problems that many, many cities across the country have. Pensions should always be tied to rates of return of what the employee and employer put into the plan, otherwise future workers or tax payers will end up footing the bill when the market goes lower than the pension requires to break even.
Fact: California and Illinois have huge debt problems. They both have really high taxes yet still can't fix them. These problems are both, funnily enough, related directly to underfunded government pension liabilities, related directly to public services with strong unions involved. In essence, precisely what you are saying is false is exactly what has happened in these states.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5975252
"Did you know that there are currently 3,459 BART retirees, and that the average pension payment per retiree/beneficiary is only $21,049?"
The news organization didn't even bother to cite their source. We don't know where they're getting their information from. Seeing a slide doesn't tell us anything. They could be reporting the misleading information that the comment I linked to you goes through. Or information given to them from management over at BART. Especially when there's conflicting information, it makes no sense to trust one side over another. Especially when it's management vs. labor because both sides want to appear as best as they can to the general public.
"We gave up over $100 million in concessions in our last
contract negotiations, and we haven’t had a raise in 5
years, yet the cost of living in the Bay Area has spiked
by over 18%."
"A BMR unit will be resold at a restricted affordable
price to a household that meets the first-time homebuyer
and income qualifications for the program and for the
particular unit. New BMR units will be repriced according
to change in the median income from the time of the
current owner’s purchase to the time of sale."
These two concessions on both sides take care of the employees and let the system progress.
The other concessions the employees are asking for such as increased lighting to improve safety are completely reasonable and shouldn't even require negotiations to implement.
The economics of bay-area engineering are broken. Consider this, how many engineers making comparable salary could take over these jobs with minimal training? What about vice-versa?
Plus, who would really enjoy working in a workplace where everyone doesn't care? I couldn't stand it even if I were paid more, couldn't lose my job, and had more vacation time.
That's because they pay way too much. If they paid commensurate to required skill level, demand would drop because the true equilibrium price is much lower.