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Comment by malyk | Hacker News Reader

So it is a little bit shocking when you see those numbers. Most of us immediately think of people who work on the subway or in public transit as meaningless low wage jobs. It seems to make sense.

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.

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Agreed, but asking for 20+ % raise over 3 years was a poor PR approach.

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...

CBS is reporting they were seeking a 15% raise over three years.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/01/bart-workers-off...

Plus 2% cost of living each year. That's actually 22.5% over 3 years.

May I get a source for that?

Not that hard to google it yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/bart-strike_n_34931.... Simple interest isn't additive, that should be the first clue.

I shouldn't have to Google it myself, you're making the claims. You can't just drop a whole bunch of numbers in a thread, present them as facts, and not cite any sources whatsoever. It does no one who is trying to learn about the subject matter any favors and isn't constructive at all.

I completely agree with this, however the tact could have been a bit better. I wouldn't mind having something like this officially added to the HN guidelines.

Use IIRC or AFAIK when you remember something, but don't remember exactly or cite a source for anything stated as fact.

Except for politics, there is little reason the conductors could not be replaced by automated systems.

In other places, some mass transit systems are at least partially automated.

I believe BART was intended to be automated. This 1972 LA Times article mentions safety concerns:

  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."

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/660715472.html?di...

That may have been the finding back when the system was being evaluated prior to '72. Since then, automation has seen vast improvements in safety and fail-safe systems.

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.

$71,000, which is high, but not astronomical

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.

and 10-12 weeks paid time off. That is 1/5 of the year. Damn I wish I had that.

Organize and form a union with like-minded co-workers and then use your collective bargaining power to negotiate better terms of employment. You know you can do that, right?

(Assuming you live in America, that is.)

While technically still possible... unions don't really work like that any more. But even if I did, I would be adding to the problem not helping. No group should have the power the unions hold over their "members" and the companies. Many people are only in a union because they are required to be in order to perform the job they do. Some of them would rather work than strike. But they don't really have a choice. If the union members have a majority vote to strike, then they strike. And the strike is little more than extortion. For those BART riders that didn't have other means to get to work... they suffered. For BART riders that were able to drive, traffic was a complete and total cluster fuck this morning. This also effected everyone else that doesn't even ride BART but had their otherwise normal commute turned upside down. The union knows this so they have no problem being unreasonable pricks until BART finally gives in to the compromised extortion. I would never be in a union. We don't need them any more. (assuming the were ever needed... which is probably debatable)

Although I won't try to debate most of your points--I think we'll have to agree to disagree--I do think you're being unfair to say that a strike is extortion. The striking workers are also suffering. Every week that the strike continues is a 2% pay cut for this year. After a few days of the strike, commuters will have adjusted and the transit union leadership will start hearing it from their members and the "balance of power" will shift back towards the BART management. Eventually, there will come a point where the workers are begging to come back to work and the union's power will have been blunted for many years.

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.

Their suffering is of their own doing (unless they are among those that voted against the strike. they're suffering as well). They don't have to beg to come back to work. They could come back tomorrow if they were not being so unreasonable.

The fact that employers can't permanently replace striking workers puts the power in the Union's hands. Perhaps it's not extortion (since no laws are broken), but I would call it coercion. Think about it from the employers' views. Employees says they're not happy with work, they don't show-up for work (unexcused absence). Employer can't fire them, and have to employ them should they return. So they hire some temporary workers, but can't keep them long term. The ones willing to work (temps) get the boot, and those that complained that their job is so bad (union workers) get to return anytime.

True, it is not the legal definition of extortion but the term extortion is "often used loosely to refer to everyday situations where one person feels indebted against their will, to another, in order to receive an essential service"[1]. Clearly no crime has been committed here since they have a right to strike. I always think of coercion as slightly different but I guess it is the more technically correct word.

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

including a fixed-benefit pension

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.

There are so many falsehoods and half-truths packed into this comment that I don't even know where to start.

So your choice is to address none of them? Cool.

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.

thatswrong0 summed it up pretty well. Of course, if you want to tell me what's wrong with both of our statements, I'd love to hear it.

Please stop throwing around numbers without citing them. It's not helpful at all. Also, I don't think paid overtime should be considered controversial.

Google it, stop being lazy. You're welcome to do your own research and refute something.

It's not the overtime that's controversial, it's the gaming of the system. For example missing a shift and then taking another one to get overtime. The only people in the entire country who get overtime for working 35 hours are transit operators.

I'm not in the US so I'm not saying your wrong, but I used to get overtime for working a 35 hour week sometimes in my previous job. And I left it, partially because of the hours. Radiographer, 35 hour week, shifts and on call. 35 hours per week (excluding call). So I would get rostered 35 hours in one week, and 35 in the next, back to back, then 4 days off. Most hours were at night. A night rate then applied. If I didn't get 2 days a week off, I'd easily end up doing a 35 hour week all paid at overtime. I still have the pay sheets I think. It all depends how you spin it, yes, I did 35 hour weeks whilst getting paid overtime. The flip side was 10 consecutive evening/night shifts, with on call in a stressful environment. Even if I wasn't called my sleep was poor. I now take any claim that a job is overpaid/underworked with a pinch of salt as its not always what it seems.

This is the graphic that the local news had up repeatedly today: https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/p480x480/1010571...

I appreciate the graphic, but it seems like there's a lot of conflicting information being handed around. I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to believe. I'd love to see an uninterested 3rd party gather and verify the facts and what not.

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?"

http://www.bartunion.org/

I don't know. This particular local news has a pretty good track record for being factual and "uninterested" (an odd word to use). I would trust them over the striking union's web site. But as others have suggested, you might need to seek out the facts yourself. Not many people are going to give you multiple sources for you the form your own opinion.

> "This particular local news has a pretty good track record for being factual and "uninterested" (an odd word to use)."

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.

  Third, public transportation is generally valued more highly here than
  in other places for a variety of reasons.

If various professionals employed by the state were paid in accordance of their value to the society (even if only to a certain slice of society), members of the armed forces would be centi-millionaires.

That line of reasoning is utter bunk.

> members of the armed forces would be centi-millionaires.

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 had the same reaction ("Huh?") but from the other direction. Centi-millionare implies a worth of $10,000 each, or $14 million for everybody.

I guess the moral is that people shouldn't try to be cute when using metric prefixes.

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