The Bart Strike : My View.

The BART Strike was vary costly to all.

The Mercury News reported the BART strike over. There was so much money wasted by the SIEU members. It was estimated that the strike itself was costing ***  1 million dollars a day for BART.The BART unions chose the wrong time to strike. With ridership in the high 300,000s, BART was enjoying unprecedented success. Hopefully, the AC Transit workers -- also in a legal strike position now -- realize that if they can stay at work and resolve their differences at the bargaining table rather than on the picket lines, they will share in the Transbay bus revenue gains stemming from the BART strike. The one-week strike in 1997 caused a lasting spike in Transbay bus ridership (from 9,000 to 12,000 people per day, if memory serves). The BART workers, on the other hand, are competing for a shrinking pool of revenue, as BART ridership will not continue to grow after the strike. Judging myself, The BART administration handled themselves vary well with the public . While the Union acted in an ass-nine way. SIEU used the bully method when it came to getting what they wanted . Simple enough there is money involved when you get a raise . BART workers, who seek a 23 percent pay increase, are already the top-paid transit system employees in the region and among the best-paid in the nation. They have free pensions, health care coverage for an entire family for just $92 a month no matter how much more taxpayers have to kick in, and the same sweet medical insurance deal when they retire after as little as five years on the job. They work 37½ hours a week, but they can call in sick during the workweek and then volunteer for overtime shifts on their days off. This exacerbates out-of-control overtime that in 2012 added an average 19 percent to base pay for station agents and 33 percent for train operators. For many of the riders who depend on BART to get to private-sector jobs that carry much less lavish compensation packages. The budget reflects $127 million for 1,051 "transportation and system service" employees independent of maintenance and engineering. That works out to $120,000 apiece, although train operators and station agents have a maximum annual salary of $62,000 with an average of $17,000 a year in overtime pay. At least some of the additional expense per employee is explained by the fact that employees of BART pay less than $100 a month for insurance regardless of the number of dependents they have and don't have to pay into their pensions.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***  The strike by BART union workers is having a costly environmental impact on the Bay Area, according to data assembled by the Bay Area Council that shows increased traffic congestion is generating almost 16 million pounds of carbon, and wasting almost 800,000 gallons of gas every day at a cost of almost $3.3 million.The environmental cost comes on top of the $73 million a day that the Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimates the BART union strike is costing the region in lost worker productivity.

That economic impact is a very conservative estimate and doesn’t include direct economic activity that could add tens of millions of dollars to the cost.