The strike is on again in San Francisco after a long tango between BART management, their lead anti-union negotiator, Thomas Hook, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and SIEU Local 1021. The fist strike back in July was called off by the unions and further delayed by the intervention of State Governor Jerry Brown who sought and obtained a court ordered 60 day cooling off period. That cooling off period has expired and with the unions and BART management making little progress the strike is back on again.
According to one report "The strike is an expression of deep opposition among transit workers to the demands of BART management, which is backed by the political establishment and media in the Bay Area and California. These demands include significant cuts in health care and pension benefits, along with changes in job rules designed to significantly reduce pay and increase management power."
The unions involved in the negotiations have conceded to most of management's demands but they know that such concessions remain deeply resented by their local membership who are unlikely to vote in favour of a sell out deal at their expense.
The sister local to ATU 1555, ATU local 192, representing bus drivers employed by AC Transit issued a strike notice after its members twice voted down sell out deals recommended to them by their leadership. During the first strike AC Transit was an essential tool in BART management's strategy of blunting the impact of the strike by running buses across the Bay area. While there was expressions of solidarity between BART workers and AC Transit drivers prior to the first strike, the ATU leadership deliberately sabotaged the tactic of a united union front in the face of management intransigence during the negotaitons by both BART and AC Transit officials.
A worker interviewed at a rally in support of the strike "noted that, just as with the first BART strike in July, the transit workers were not receiving any strike pay. Workers will receive a meager $25 a week in strike pay only if it lasts more than two or three weeks, he said." For many workers this second strike appears to be a continuation of the first one, which was shut down by the unions with the promise that management would bargain fairly. “This is pretty much a continuation of the first strike,” said one worker. “They never really negotiated so I think of this as the sixth day of our strike.”
The unions involved in the negotiations have conceded to most of management's demands but they know that such concessions remain deeply resented by their local membership who are unlikely to vote in favour of a sell out deal at their expense.
The sister local to ATU 1555, ATU local 192, representing bus drivers employed by AC Transit issued a strike notice after its members twice voted down sell out deals recommended to them by their leadership. During the first strike AC Transit was an essential tool in BART management's strategy of blunting the impact of the strike by running buses across the Bay area. While there was expressions of solidarity between BART workers and AC Transit drivers prior to the first strike, the ATU leadership deliberately sabotaged the tactic of a united union front in the face of management intransigence during the negotaitons by both BART and AC Transit officials.
A worker interviewed at a rally in support of the strike "noted that, just as with the first BART strike in July, the transit workers were not receiving any strike pay. Workers will receive a meager $25 a week in strike pay only if it lasts more than two or three weeks, he said." For many workers this second strike appears to be a continuation of the first one, which was shut down by the unions with the promise that management would bargain fairly. “This is pretty much a continuation of the first strike,” said one worker. “They never really negotiated so I think of this as the sixth day of our strike.”
Workers are aware and deeply suspicious of the role their unions have been taking in the strike, knowing full well that Governor Brown would seek the court imposed injunction, and instead of devising a common strike strategy between BART workers and AC Transit drivers, deliberately keeping them apart so that AC Transit drivers would be forced to work as scabs in the event of a strike by BART subway workers.
Only one day after the strike began two BART maintenance workers who were checking a section of track were struck and killed by a San Francisco Bay area commuter train. Because of the ongoing transit strike a non-union employee was operating the train. According to the police deputy chief for Bay Area Rapid Transit the driver in the accident was “qualified.” Apparently at the time of the accident, the train was "being run in automatic mode under computer control."
BART Assistant General Manager, Paul Oversier, told reporters that one of the two workers, whose names were not released, was with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Oversier said. The union is not on strike but had asked members to show up on picket lines to support other workers. The employee "chose to come to work," Oversier said.
In its twitter feed ATU Local 1555 said it would suspend picketing for one day due to the recent tragedy and out of respect for the families involved. On Saturday night, picketers held candlelight vigils for the two workers killed. The Local 1555 twitter post stated "Our hearts go out to any @SFBART comrades involved in today's incident. In the midst of this #BARTstrike, NO ONE deserves to die."
The trains are running again in the San Francisco Bay Area as two union and Bay Area Rapid Transit management have reached a tentative deal ending a four-day strike. The strike had been prompted in large part by management's desire to be able to set aside existing work rules, which workers said would compromise safety. Those safety concerns were reinforced in one of the worst possible ways Saturday when a train struck and killed two workers inspecting tracks. Monday night the National Transportation Safety Board announced that the train had been driven by what they termed an "operator trainee"—a scab, in other words. That foregrounded workers' safety concerns in general and certainly concerns over management's plans to use scabs if the strike dragged on. In the tentative deal, the unions reportedly made concessions on rules involving technology, which BART management had made much of even while poo-pooing safety concerns. The strike highlighted some of the Bay Area tech community's disgraceful tendencies, with wealthy tech executives outraged that BART workers were fighting to stay in the middle class and retain a reasonable expectation of safety. As Corey Robin wrote, "The technorati like to think of themselves and their gizmos as 'disruptors.' They want to see everything disrupted—except their morning commute." To them, mere workers shouldn't have the power to disrupt. But if the economic race to the bottom is going to be slowed, workers will have to do a lot more disrupting, so unless you want to see vastly more inequality, learn to love disruption from below, not just from technological innovation. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/22/1249602/-Bay-Area-trains-running-again-as-unions-and-management-reach-tentative-deal#
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