(In California, residents interviewed by the NY Times at a public hearing into a threatened strike by SEIU and ATU members of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system expressed support in principle for trade unionism while opposing the unions' defence of their pay and benefits standards. We know this is an all too common response by workers whose conditions lag farther behind, particularly in downturns, and especially in regard to public sector workers. Here the public has a direct interest in the maintenance of the health and sanitation, education, energy, communications, and transportation infrastructure, which has contributed to the breakdown of class consciousness and union solidarity which was characteristic of industrial capitalist economies before the advent of the welfare state.
In this case, the interest of BART's riders in blocking a disruptive work stoppage counts for more than their professed sympathies for trade unionism, and has rendered them susceptible to the anti-union propaganda circulated by employers, politicians, and the media. It has become generally more difficult for public sector unions, who have largely supplanted the industrial unions as the major component of the labour movement, to build alliances with workers outside their own ranks in both union and non-union households. The Chicago teachers' strike broke with this pattern, but it's as yet unclear whether it was exceptional or represents the emergence of an hopeful new trend.) Changing Attitudes on Labor Color Bay Area Transit Dispute By NORIMITSU ONISHI New York Times August 10 2013 OAKLAND, Calif. — With the threat of a railroad shutdown looming, Alice Jorgensen was at the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s MacArthur Station here on a recent morning, waiting for the service she uses 8 to 10 times a week to run errands and go to the library. A strike, she said, would be “a real inconvenience.” Like most people in the San Francisco Bay Area, a liberal, Democratic stronghold that has traditionally been supportive of organized labor, she favors unions. “But I can see how people without unions feel burned because their wages aren’t going up,” said Ms. Jorgensen, 59, who worked as a receptionist in a veterinary clinic until 2005, when a thyroid problem forced her to go on disability. “I’m slightly less pro-union than I was in the past, because I think unions can be so supportive of their members that they are not looking at the entire picture of society.” The labor dispute at the transit system, known as BART, is taking place against a backdrop of changing attitudes toward organized labor in California. Union membership and support for labor remain higher in this state, and especially in the Bay Area, than in most of the rest of the country. But unions have lost backing here, as in the rest of the country, labor experts say. People are less inclined to view labor’s gains as those of the wider public’s, they say, particularly as many have suffered reductions in wages and benefits in the past half decade. Ms. Jorgensen had a similar view. “Given the economy, I think the unionized people should be breaking even, not necessarily getting ahead,” she said. “There are a lot of workers out there who don’t even have a union or a pension or health care benefits.” On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown said he would impose a 60-day cooling-off period in the negotiations if both sides failed to reach an agreement by Sunday night, guaranteeing service for the next couple of months. But if no progress is made in the talks, the decision could simply postpone a strike until October, when more commuters will be back at work and students return to class; then, the economic impact on the Bay Area would be greater. Last Sunday, Mr. Brown appointed a fact-finding panel charged with submitting a report on the dispute, averting a strike at the last minute. BART’s management and its two largest unions, the Service Employees International Union and the Amalgamated Transit Union, resumed negotiating on Thursday, a day after a public hearing showed how far apart the two sides stood on crucial issues — so far that they could not even agree on how many tens of millions of dollars separated them from a deal. Mark Stillman, 54, who worked as a mechanical engineer before suffering a disability, was one of many BART users at the hearing, during which both sides presented their positions to the fact-finding panel. He described himself as a union supporter, but said the BART unions needed to “modernize.” The BART employees’ public pensions — to which employees make no contribution — should be closer to what workers in the private sector get, he said. “I think their pensions are too protected and idealistic,” Mr. Stillman said. “If you look at commercial businesses and companies, the employees are more responsible for their pensions. The BART employees don’t pay anything into their pensions, and I think they ought to be assuming more of the risk.” BART negotiators are asking workers to start pension contributions, with the share increasing annually over a four-year contract; they are offering a 9 percent pay raise over four years. The unions are demanding a 15 percent raise over three years and an additional 6.5 percent raise the first year as a condition for making pension contributions. “This is just another example of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” said Dana McMillan, 42, who was at the MacArthur BART station with her twin daughters in a double stroller. “The people working at BART are homeowners.” “Why should I be the one who suffers for their strike?” said Ms. McMillan who during a four-day strike by BART workers in early July was unable to commute to San Francisco, where she works as an optician’s assistant for about $15 an hour. About 400,000 people ride BART every day, with most commuting to San Francisco from here and other eastern suburbs. Unlike transit workers elsewhere in the country, BART’s 2,400 workers have the right to strike under a California law that covers many public employees. But many municipalities, including San Francisco, prohibit their transportation workers from striking. Unions in California have been able to offset eroding support in recent years by winning the backing of Hispanic workers through their strong advocacy of immigration rights. “Unions in California have not been immune to the general tide against organized labor,” said William B. Gould IV, an emeritus professor of law and a labor expert at Stanford University. “But they have a more solid base than organized labor elsewhere because California has a greater immigrant and Latino population.” At the public hearing, BART management officials said they wanted to rein in rising benefit costs to be able to upgrade BART’s 40-year-old infrastructure and buy new trains for projected increases in ridership. But union officials countered that BART must invest in its employees. “We are not ashamed to be bargaining to defend a middle-class wage and benefit package,” said Vincent Harrington, a lawyer for the Service Employees International Union. The statement elicited strong applause from the union members in the audience. But in the continuing dispute, many people and newspaper editorials have pointed out that BART employees rank among the nation’s highest-paid transit workers, with train operators and station agents earning on average more than $70,000 a year in salary and overtime. Joseph Adair, 28, relies on BART for his work as a freelance handyman. He lost 40 percent of his business in 2008, he said, a situation that had favorably altered his views of unions. “I’m a self-starter, and I did not understand relying on a system like that to get by,” Mr. Adair said. “Now I understand the appeal of the kind of security a union gives you. It’s a safety net.” Another BART rider, Doug Boyd, an actor who is a member of two guilds, had a similar view. “When times get really hard and things get really squeezed economically,” he said, “you’re happy that the unions are there to say, stop, you cannot take away anything more from the workers.” Nonetheless, he has found it hard to be sympathetic toward BART employees. “They make $70,000 without a college degree,” he said. “I’m less pro-union than I used to be, because unions can be inflationary.” _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
