Negotiations will continue tomorrow, but the possibility of another strike beginning Tuesday morning looms over the heads of Bay Area commuters. The postponement of a strike comes after Gov. Jerry Brown issued a 60-day cooling-off period, which ended Thursday night.

BART submitted its “last, best and final offer” at 4 p.m., an indication that no further negotiation is possible and a move that was rebuffed by some elected officials, including state Assemblymember Nancy Skinner.

“We want the trains to keep running, and we need both sides to keep talking to get there,” Skinner said. “So when BART management cut off negotiations today by putting forward a final offer at 4 p.m., we were disappointed, and we felt it did a lot of damage because it impeded progress.”

Gladys Rosario covers city news. Contact her at grosario@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @gladysrosario93.

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Danielle Shi/Staff

We are now in year two of the Pac-12 Networks, a bold venture that gives our 12 universities their own media company. Our focus is to provide unprecedented exposure for all student-athletes and, just as importantly, learning and paid internship opportunities for thousands of Pac-12 students. Unfortunately, those opportunities are being threatened by the labor union whose fliers you may have recently seen around campus.

Because this issue affects you so directly, I want to share with you what is at stake and the position we have taken — one we believe protects our mission and provides first-rate wages and working conditions for both union workers and other professionals. I also want to share with you why I am so personally committed to preserving these opportunities for Pac-12 students.

First, a bit of background on where the Pac-12 Networks and the union disagree, and where we don’t. This isn’t a strike. In fact, we’ve hired, and continue to hire, hundreds of members of the union — the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees — as camera operators, sound engineers and other technical jobs for our game telecasts. And we pay them rates that meet or exceed the prevailing wage in each of the areas where we operate.

The crux of the disagreement is that the union wants us to engage only union members, and we can’t agree to that. A commercial model of the type the union wants to impose is not viable when the goal is not just to make money but also to provide exposure to traditionally underserved student-athletes, especially women and participants in Olympic sports. Student interns enable those sports to be broadcast while many union members and other professionals are engaged, especially for major revenue-producing sports such as football and basketball. This flexibility is win-win for everyone.

But to me, the most important reason is that it would deny thousands of students the life-changing opportunity of a paid internship in TV production. This is not only a core part of the Pac-12 Networks mission; it is a core part of who I am and why I love being here.

I fell in love with TV sports as a kid watching ABC’s legendary Wide World of Sports. I learned more about what happens behind the camera when, as a member of the U.S. speed-skating team, I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with the crew on the production truck. Then, through the Medill News Service at Northwestern University, I had the chance to do just about everything: write, produce, run camera, even appear on air (which I later decided wasn’t for me).

Without those crucial opportunities, I don’t think I would have had the career I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy. Providing similar opportunities for you and thousands of your fellow students around the Pac-12 is, by far, the single most rewarding thing I do. It is what makes this job and Pac-12 Networks different from any other TV network or sports enterprise I know of.

We plan to do even more for students. I want those of you who work with us to touch every part of the process and learn as many positions as you can. That’s why we already use students in so many different ways, including as stage managers, camera operators and even on-air talent. Ultimately, we want our Pac-12 Studios to become a teaching facility and media lab for Pac-12 students. The restrictive hiring and work rules of a union shop would strangle that initiative, and thousands of our students would pay the price, not only today but in future opportunities foreclosed.

Fortunately, there’s no reason to let that happen. Our unique and flexible model is providing crucial student opportunities and well-paying jobs for professionals. Last year, in our very first year of operation, we created more than 13,000 daily hire positions. This year, as we increase our coverage to 750 events, that number will increase to 15,000. We’ve demonstrated that we can do the right thing for our employees while also fulfilling our mission for our student-athletes, financially benefiting our member universities and providing career-building, life-changing experiences to students.

And that’s exactly what a network affiliated with 12 great universities should be doing.

Lydia Murphy-Stephans is president of Pac-12 Networks.

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Yi Zhong/Staff

It’s 8 p.m. Sunday night, June 30, 2013.

We just found out that the BART negotiators had no further proposals to present.

Paper in hand, we did the math. The last offer they left on the table meant a cut of more than 12 percent in take pay per year — times four years. This is the offer that we faced after four years of zero wage increases, four years of BART budget surpluses and an increase in ridership of more than 11 percent.

On June 25, the BART unions voted by an overwhelming 98.6 percent to authorize a strike under these conditions.

What were we to do? In addition to the economics, the district rejected the union’s safety proposals (which included safety lighting and reopening the public restrooms in the underground stations), and they also left their draconian management rights proposals on the table (such as invasive sick-leave procedures and unilateral changes to job descriptions).

These negotiations weren’t supposed to happen this way. We did everything that we could to prevent a strike. We got started with the process early. Our researchers began in October 2012 — the bargaining team, back in December. Despite our best efforts, the district stonewalled us and left us with only seven weeks to bargain the contract.

BART’s relationship with its unions has always been contentious. Sixteen years ago, when I began working at BART, I was told, firstly, to save my money, because we were going on strike (the 1997 strike). Then, I was told to keep in mind that the district (management) could never be trusted.

I was advised about how to perform my job within the framework of the BART system. How to get things done by calling on another Union Brother or Sister. They would be the ones to advise me about how to access the stations after dark, how to keep safe (by riding in the first transit vehicle at night), where to park my car, where to get a meal at 2 a.m., which high-rail vehicles I should request in order to perform preventive maintenance safely inside the transbay tube, etc. Most importantly, I was warned to never, never, ever trust that management would be there for me if I got into any trouble.

The BART transit system is the ultimate experiment in collaboration. Every station, every shop and jurisdiction operates as a separate entity and has its own flavor. The unions are the glue that connects this system. Going through the recent media, there is an underlying misconception that the BART system is a well-tuned, high-tech, well-managed transit system. BART promotes a vision that it has a clear understanding of how to get things accomplished, that all systems are lined up for productivity — all they really need is a flexible work force.

In my 25 years prior to coming to BART, I’ve never seen an organization with a more “exactly incompetent” managerial staff. The truth is that they rely heavily on manual procedures, institutional history and the discretionary passion of individual workers. So much of the system has never been documented. Contractors come and go without a trace, leaving regular workers to do forensics and reverse engineering in order to keep the system going.

Back to negotiations. The last few months have been an exercise in futility. This dispute is not about economics; it’s about breaking the unions. The new general manager and the negotiator that she hired for $400,000 has a history in transit labor relations that does not bode well for the unions.

Still, there is purity in the way that they are coming at us. They simply do not care. Our strength is our ability to withhold labor, so they respond by creating an untenable situation,and forcing us out on strike. They know that a successful strike takes planning and organization,and that due to the steady decline of organized labor in the private sector, the pressure will be heavily upon the unions.

The theory is this: If we go out on strike, we will lose money. BART will continue to beat us up in the press in order to break our resolve. When the workers come back, they will be angry.  It is management’s plan that that anger should be directed toward the union. To bolster the plan, they will blatantly violate the contract. They will retaliate and disrespect any union leader who showed any kind of backbone during the strike. They will resolve issues only with sycophants and toadies and will seek to exhaust the union’s resources by tying it up in grievances, arbitrations and court actions.

Brothers and sisters, on midnight of June 30, we, the BART workers, were a force to reckon with. We rose up in defense of all working people against capitalism. As the strongest, most powerful transit union in the United States, on Independence Day of 2013, we had our boot on the neck of the dragon, but we didn’t finish the job. For various reasons (to be discussed over a beer later), we let up.

The BART unions still do not have a contract; we have another deadline of midnight, August 4, and recent history is repeating itself. If and when we go out on strike again, it has to be different. Working people and youth are under attack everywhere. We need to join forces to protect and improve the standard of living for all working people in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Please join the BART unions and the ILWU for All Out August 1 in Oakland for a labor solidarity rally to stop attacks on BART transit workers and all employer attacks on unions.

Rhea Davis is a 16-year BART electronic technician and the BART chapter vice president of SEIU 1021.

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Creative Commons/Courtesy

For Berkeley students and Bay Area residents in general, the BART strike was a major inconvenience. Most of us don’t drive, and even those who do prefer to use public transportation over long distances. As such, it’s not uncommon to think that the unions have the upper hand in this negotiation.

Yet nothing has been resolved since unionized BART employees went on strike last Monday. This is due to the fact that the unions have overestimated their leverage. A strike needs at least one of the following two factors in order to be impactful: inelastic demand for the suspended service or overwhelming public support.

On the surface, it would seem that the first factor is a given. However, Bay Area workers are speedy adapters. Most have chosen to use alternatives like carpooling, ferry, AC Transit bus and even Google bus to get into the city and back. Some have also opted to telecommute from home to avoid road congestion.

Perhaps the reason the public has adapted so quickly is that most of us are unsympathetic to the unionized workers’ cause. And it’s hardly surprising once we’ve looked at the numbers. BART workers are among the highest paid in transportation services. On average, BART operators of automated trains earn $30.22 per hour. Their work week only requires 37.5 hours, so a 40-hour schedule already has 2.5 hours of overtime built in. They only pay $92 a month toward their medical insurance plans, regardless of family size. They contribute nothing to their pension plan. Finally, there’s no limit to how much vacation time they can accrue (two years after she was forced to resign, former general manager Dorothy Dugger was still the top earner on BART’s payroll because she was cashing out 3,100 hours of unused time off). It’s no wonder that some Berkeley students have volunteered to fill in the vacancies — even a Cal degree will not usually earn you $30.22 per hour at the entry level!

Despite unfavorable support, the unions still refuse to budge unless BART agrees to give its workers a 4.5 percent raise per year for the next three years in addition to better healthcare and pension plans.

Meanwhile, BART’s management has agreed to double the original proposal to an 8 percent raise — 5 percent would be unconditional and 3 percent conditional on whether workers agree to pay more for their healthcare and pension.

With top state officials stepping in as mediators, BART employees have resumed work on Friday. However, another strike is inevitable if an agreement cannot be reached by Aug. 4.

Until then, here is some advice for both parties. First, the board of directors needs to seriously apply stricter scrutiny on employee benefits — we didn’t vote for these board members only to have them squander our tax money! Second, the unions need to wake up and take a look at the real world. Sure, the economy has recovered, but it’s far from being stable. Many people in the private sector have not received a raise in five years (cost-of-living adjustment excluded), so public servants should not be the first to complain. After all, the ones who are most affected by this strike are the low- and middle-income classes, who rely mainly on public transportation. In other words, the unions are hurting those they claim to help! It would be helpful if they can remember what former president Franklin D. Roosevelt said when he forbade public employees to join unions: “The employer is the whole people.”

Image source: acidhelm via Creative Commons

Anh Thai ponders about insidious world problems in her Tuesday blog. Contact Anh Thai at athai@dailycal.org.

The post Why BART workers should stop complaining appeared first on The Daily Californian.

“BART’s going on strike.” I got the news first from Twitter.

“Well, we’re screwed,” my roommate said.

His boyfriend piped up reassuringly. “We can make it work. We need to make a plan.”

My tribe of roommates sat down last week to figure out a strategy. Our apartment is in Fremont. Jeff works in Newark only a few miles away, but getting there by bus involves an ill-timed transfer. Devin goes to San Francisco State University in Daly City. John works in Corte Madera, and his normal commute involves three transit agencies, including BART. I have class in Berkeley four days a week, but I can take AC Transit the whole way if I have three hours to spare. Collectively, the household has one car. Solve for X, where X represents everyone getting to work and school on time and before we can’t stand one another anymore.

Solving this dilemma required a complicated system of picking up and dropping off, minimizing tolls and taking advantage of free BART parking during the strike. My roommate selflessly shared his fuel-efficient Honda, and together we put almost 100 miles a day on the odometer. The days began at 4:45 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m., but the job got done. Overall, the measurable cost of commuting this way came to just about the same as our combined cost of commute if BART were running. However, not everything can be measured in dollars and cents.

There are resources available to everyone that are simple to cultivate and can be incredibly valuable. These nonmonetary economic resources are the very thing that saved my friends, my roommates and me during the recent strike. The greatest of these resources is goodwill. My roommate didn’t hesitate to offer us the use of his car. One of my good friends is teaching in the Summer Bridge program and was immediately offered a closer place to stay in Berkeley. Another friend from Cal joined forces with a classmate so that they could carpool from Pleasanton together. The people who extend these offers are kind and generous, but the remainder of these transactions is made up by banked goodwill. The recipients of the kindness and help of friends put in months and sometimes years of the reciprocating behavior of friendship to indicate that we are worthy of this kind of nonmonetary investment.

A person without good friends — without this long term banking of goodwill — might have had to arrange for a rental car or a local hotel room in order to keep a job or make it to class during the last week. Comparing scenarios between people with banked goodwill and people without it doesn’t seem like an argument about economy, but the bottom line can be expressed in debit and credit.

This principle is nearly identical to the idea of networking. Networking is this nebulous idea of making lasting and worthwhile connections, and we’re all supposed to be doing it in college and online and at parties and any time the panic about post-graduation employment sets in. Networking is supposed to bank professional goodwill and remind potential contacts that we are fun at parties and that we know the same people; it’s supposed to keep our names and faces fresh in the minds of those who matter. The ones who matter aren’t always in charge, however. Often, even an entry-level good word is an advantage to an applicant.

Here’s the point: Whether networking for a job or banking goodwill for reciprocity in friendships, your contribution is the same. If you are friendly, if you are kind, if you are forthcoming and generous with your time and your thoughts, the payoff has value, even when forming priceless relationships. Goodwill has a distinct economic worth. It’s an odd way to think of it, but it means having a car to borrow or a couch to crash on in another city during a transit strike. Relationships make up our lives, but they also have measurable utility. The more you put into them, the more you can someday derive from them.

The BART strike lasted less than a week. My friend staying in Berkeley left his borrowed lodging clean and with a vase of flowers on the table in thanks. My friends from Pleasanton worked out the worth of their carpool without gas money, because one is far better off than the other. Instead, the driver asked her passenger to read her the news, tell her jokes and keep the ride interesting. I brought back my roommate’s car with a bunch of new miles on it, but I also ran all his errands for him while I had it and surprised him with takeout.

Being rich or being broke is not merely a condition dictated by the contents of one’s bank account. It is, literally and metaphorically, expressed in the relationships we have with one another and what comes of them. Measure in utils, measure in love.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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BART service resumed Friday afternoon following the strike that stemmed from disagreements over contract negotiations for higher salaries, better safety regulations and the amount of worker contribution to pensions and medical benefits. Negotiations will continue over the next 30 days while the existing contract provisions remain in place.

While both sides have raised fair questions about employee contracts, it should not have taken until after a negotiation deadline and stoppage of service for a decision to be found. The fact that talks stopped on Sunday, June 30 — the original negotiating deadline — and did not resume until Tuesday, July 9 at 6 p.m. is emblematic of this problem and sadly reminiscent of partisan conflict in Congress.

Bay Area citizens are heavily dependent on BART for transportation around the region to almost a paralyzing degree. BART spokesman Rick Rice estimated that 400,000 commuters ride BART each day, and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimated the Bay Area economy lost almost $73 million each day in productivity as a result of the strike.There is no guarantee that there won’t be another strike following the 30-day extension period.

AC Transit and other Bay Area transportation services should be commended for stepping up their game during the BART strike. AC Transit increased the frequency and number of its transbay commuter buses and regular bus lines, such as the F line, which Berkeley residents use to travel to San Francisco.
Extending the negotiation deadline to Aug. 4 puts increased pressure on both sides to come to an agreement by this date. The public has already come to resent both BART’s workers and its administration and will continue to do so if a decision cannot be reached soon. As a type of public service, BART administration and employees owe it to travelers to stop jeopardizing the economy and daily routine of a major metropolitan area.

Both sides are reportedly apologetic. But we don’t need apologies — we need action.

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Taxpayers help fund UC hospitals — facilities that bank hundreds of millions in profits each year.  But the university is under-resourcing frontline care to the point where both patients and providers are being unnecessarily put at risk.

UCSF just eliminated 300 patient care jobs — nursing staff, pharmacy technicians and so many others — just as the system prepares for a tsunami of new patients with the onset of healthcare reform.

UCSF is a poster child for the seemingly systemwide race to the bottom on issues of safe staffing.  This includes asking providers who are already stretched thin to do more with less as well as an increasing reliance on inexperienced temporary workers and volunteers. That may look great on a balance sheet, but it looks terrible if your loved one happens to be lying in a UC hospital bed. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

UCLA just received its second substandard patient safety rating in as many years from a leading health-care buyer’s group. The UC Regents just settled a $1.2 million federal whistleblower lawsuit alleging patient neglect at UC Irvine. Last year, a federal watchdog agency warned of “systemic failures” at UC Davis Medical Center. There have also been 11 formal findings of “immediate jeopardy” by the department of public health at UC Irvine and UCSF medical centers.

Most recently, John Stobo, the UC senior vice president for health services, acknowledged that UC “clinical care needs improvement” and that the system is lagging in affordability, patient satisfaction and even patient outcomes. And when hospitals aren’t staffed appropriately, there can be real human costs — preventable patient falls, undersanitized facilities, hospital-acquired infections and a greater risk for mistakes.

It comes down to priorities. Today, the fastest growing segment of workers at UC medical centers consists of the highly paid executives who never see or touch a patient. Executive payroll has spiked $100 million annually since 2009. New profit incentives have driven reckless cost cutting systemwide.  Top hospital administrators are getting seven-figure salaries, six-figure bonuses, $300,000 annual pensions and millions more in supplemental benefits.

Such largesse diverts resources away from frontline care. But UC executives have gone further. They demand that the lowest-paid patient care workers make additional sacrifices — unpaid breaks, skeleton crews, broken equipment and cuts to their already modest livelihoods — to subsidize it.

For the cost of one fewer beach house or yacht, UC executives could take an important step toward arresting the growing safety risks afflicting their hospitals. But they refuse. Instead, they recently threatened to sue the UC Regents, demanding even more exorbitant pensions. And sadly, they have made it clear that they are willing to hold safe staffing and patient care hostage unless their golden handshakes are protected.

At the University of California, it shouldn’t be that the only thing growing faster than student tuition and patient care costs is the number of millionaires being created at  their expense from within the ranks of UC management. That’s not how you build or maintain a world-class health delivery system. It’s how you degrade one.

AFSCME 3299 has negotiated in good faith for almost a year. Our priorities include crucial protections for our patients, like enforceable safe-staffing standards.  We were the last to issue a proposal to the university. But it has refused to offer anything in return that would not perpetuate an already dangerous status quo.

The decision to strike was a difficult one for our members — including respiratory therapists, MRI techs, radiologists, diagnostic sonographers, certified nursing assistants and so many others. Thousands of votes were cast with more than 97 percent support for one very good reason: Patient care workers know that failing to act today could invite disastrous consequences for the huge influx of new patients we can expect in the coming years.

Patient safety is and will always be our top priority.  That’s why we have volunteered a select number of workers to staff the most critical care areas in UC hospitals during the strike and developed a Patient Protection Task Force to help respond to unforeseen medical contingencies.

It’s also why we welcomed the state Public Employment Relations Board’s decision last week to issue a formal complaint against the university for its repeated refusal to cooperate with us on either initiative.

We are fighting to restore the UC system to its rightful place as the crown jewel of California’s health delivery system. We are fighting for our patients and our families.  And we hope you will join us on the picket line or contact UC administrators and ask them to settle a fair contract that puts patient care before profits.

Kathryn Lybarger is the president of AFSCME Local 3299.

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According to a statement published by AFSCME 3299, a union representing UC service and patient-care workers, the strike aims to bring attention to alleged patient health issues at UC medical centers. Following months of unsuccessful attempts at negotiations, 13,000 patient care technical workers will strike against the elimination of frontline care jobs as well as increasing executive payrolls and debts, the statement reads.

“UC administrators are asking frontline care providers to subsidize chronic understaffing, growing management bloat and unprecedented executive excess at UC’s taxpayer-supported teaching hospitals,” said Kathryn Lybarger, president of AFSCME 3299. “That’s something we simply will not do.”

The most recent agreement between the university and AFSCME workers expired on Sept. 30, 2012. According to the press release, negotiations and mediation proceedings before and since then have failed to produce an agreement on several issues.

In a report published by AFSCME last month, the union alleged that UC medical centers are endangering patients by eliminating hundreds of frontline care jobs and outsourcing critical patient-care functions to less experienced workers. The report stated that the hospitals have increased executive payroll by $100 million since 2009 and have quadrupled their annual debt payment obligations since 2006.

“Every time we try to talk about patient care, the UC tries to change the subject,” said Todd Stenhouse, communications director for AFSCME 3299. “UC is sending a very troubling message to grandmothers, to neighbors, to families who depend on frontline patient care for their lives.”

Noting that the medical centers are renowned for providing world-class patient care, UC representatives dismissed allegation of chronic understaffing and patient-safety issues at UC medical centers put forth by the report.

“By encouraging a possible strike among our patient care employees, AFSCME is attempting to use patient care as a tool in contract negotiations, and potentially endangering public health, which is completely inappropriate,” said Dwaine Duckett, UC vice president for systemwide human resources, in a statement last Friday. “Patients are not bargaining chips.”

Duckett said that AFSCME’s strike vote is an attempt to divert attention from its refusal to agree to the university’s pension reforms. He said that the university would continue to be open to compromise and try to reach a fair and financially responsible contract for employees.

“The way to resolve differences about employee pay and benefits is through substantive and collaborative discussion at the bargaining table — not by threatening strikes that endanger patient care,” Duckett said.

Contact Mia Shaw at mshaw@dailycal.org.

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Asking for better pay, more comprehensive benefits and a moratorium on school closures, the Chicago Teachers Union began their strike on Sept. 10. The strike received national attention, as it had been 25 years since the nation’s third largest city had its last.

The Chicago Teachers Union suspended its walkout on Tuesday and promised to return to classrooms Wednesday, national news outlets report.

The campus rally began at noon and lasted for about an hour, with participants dressed in matching red shirts holding up a sign reading “Berkeley Stands with Chicago Teachers.”

“Their fight is our fight,” said Bill Balderston, a rally organizer and spokesperson for Oakland Education Association, a teachers’ union for Oakland Unified School District. “Chicago Teachers Union is fighting against school closures and drastic austerity measures, the same problems that East Bay teachers face today.”

According to Balderston, five Oakland schools have shut down in the past year, and there have been major cuts in school arts, special education and physical education programs.

“Some say teachers are being selfish. That is not true. Teachers know that students are the real victims, and that is why they are fighting to save the schools,” Balderston said.

The rally’s message extended beyond support for the strike into a general concern regarding the direction of public education.

“This rally is not simply about our support for CTU,” said Barbara Barnes, a lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. “It also serves to raise awareness about our society’s shift away from public education to privatization of education.”

Contact Dan Kwak at dkwak@dailycal.org.

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