BART directors should reject this flawed contract says Gov Brown's former aid Glazer

BART directors should reject this flawed contract says Gov Brown's former aid Glazer
BART directors should reject this flawed contract
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/BART-directors-shou...
Steve Glazer

November 19, 2013

The latest BART contract shocker is the newly discovered cost of a disputed family-leave provision. No one really should be surprised: Most of the contract details have been hidden from riders, taxpayers and even BART's own directors.

Every BART commuter and Bay Area taxpayer should root for the BART Board to reject this contract - not just because of its unsustainable costs and weak work-rule reforms, but because it does nothing - zero - to prevent the next BART strike.

And get ready. Because another strike is inevitable.

We deserved better. After suffering eight days of strike and four days of midnight misery as we waited to learn whether the trains would run the next morning, we are left with an absolute surrender. The contract negotiated by BART management:

-- Raises BART costs by at least $67 million over four years. The final labor costs negotiated by management is as much as 48 percent higher than BART's "last, best and final" offer (16.4 percent compounded salary increase over four years, plus bonuses). This does not even include the disputed family-leave benefit clause - which may cost tens of millions more. Existing revenues will not cover these costs. Undoubtedly, fares will be raised and new debt-financing proposals floated.

-- Adds non-safety work rules that are no different than what we learned in kindergarten: Be honest, don't cheat, be diligent and responsible. And don't skip the fine print - work rules changes are subject to binding arbitration, so they might raise BART costs even more. Management uses work rule changes to justify the higher pay and benefits.

-- Does nothing to prevent the next strike. In fact, the new contract retains a key provision that serves to encourage future strikes: the ban on training replacement workers until a strike begins. Because it takes weeks for workers to be fully and safely trained, BART riders can again be held hostage by union leaders.

This last provision is the key. BART management surrendered to its employees because it believed, in the face of the strike, that it had no better option to get the trains running again. It's not just BART riders who are hurt by a strike. The Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimates that each day of a BART strike sucks $73 million out of the regional economy. It also harms our environment by forcing riders into their cars and wasting 800,000 gallons of gas each day of a strike and putting 16 million pounds of carbon into the air we breathe.

BART is facing escalating pension costs and enormous capital needs. The most disappointing element of this conflict is how it has eroded public confidence in our transit managers when future needs and improvements demand just the opposite.

People have had enough. More than 20,000 Bay Area residents already have signed a petition asking state lawmakers to add California to New York, Massachusetts, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, governments that restrict transit strikes.

This episode proves why a state law is needed to backstop a regional body such as the BART board. Whatever the board's intentions, it is not equipped to handle a highly combustible labor situation.

The latest dispute over whether the family-leave provision was part of the final labor package reinforces the need to prevent BART riders and our economy from bearing the consequences of management and union dysfunction.

Until our elected leaders listen and act, it will be deja vu all over again.

Steve Glazer is an Orinda City Council member and organizer of the Ban BART Strikes Web page.