Today in Who Wants To Be The Biggest Dick? news (sorry, Donald Trump, we know you do but you can't wineveryday), some contestant with dial-up and a direct ticket to hell offers this submission . It's a Tumblr page called BART Bratz -- get it? sooo funny! -- to make fun of those lousy BART workers who went on strike this week for, like, half a second because they have not had a cost-of-living adjustment in YEARS even though the cost of living in the Bay Area has assploded by double digits , thanks to all these young kids these days wanting to do Dotcom 2.0 to Silicon Valley because they weren't borned yet the last time that went Really. Fucking. Badly.
But somesay (see, Fox News, we can do it too!) that BART workers should just shut up and "get it over with, man," because it's "such an inconvenience to everyone." (You know what else is inconvenient? Not having a paycheck that even attempts to keep up with the cost of living. Try THAT sometime,man.)
Let's take a peek at this super hi-larious page devoted to shaming those BART workers because sometimes -- grab the smelling salts and hide the children! -- they go on vacation, which proves they do not really need or deserve paychecks!
This is [name redacted because we are not assholes], a Station Agent making $93,095 in salary and benefits. She makes enough money to travel quite a bit, but not enough money to justify keeping a transit system 400,000 Bay Area residents depend on every day running!
Ooooh, gotcha, BART worker! Oh, except for one thing: the actual cost of living in the Bay Area, where theaveragerent for an apartment in San Francisco is almost three thousand goddamned dollars a month . (And it's not much better in the other parts of the Bay Area that actually get sun.) So those prices have jumped double digits in the last few years, but BART workers' salaries have jumped ... oh, let's check our wonkculator ... carry the one ... ZERO. They have jumped zero percent.
But so what? Just because it's eleventy billion times more expensive to live in the already obscenely expensive Bay Area is no reason BART workers shouldn't keep working for the same wages no matter what FOR EVAH! That's just, like, how capitalism works, bitchez, and if you can afford to take vacation, then you can afford to have nothing and like it.
Sadly, the page is already down -- Mattel don't fuck around, yo, is the lesson we take away from this, as "Tumblr page creator had dalliance with shame, decency" does not seem like the likeliest story.
I&rsquo;m outside the Bay Area now, and have never kept up on BART, because San Jose, but from what you say it sounds like train operators are probably being paid about correctly. Base salary equal to median <i>household</i> income (+ OT + probably better than average benefits and retirement) sounds like a pretty reasonable deal. It certainly doesn&rsquo;t compare with the compensation of the imported geeks, but it&rsquo;s better than, e.g., teachers.
Now, I appreciate that the local (SF-peninsula) cost of living (which, as always, really means the cost of housing) has spiked significantly in the last few years. (It&rsquo;s also gone up in the outlying Bay Area, but not as sharply*.)
This naturally reinforces the desire for a COLA among the folks who actually live in the City. As an aside, didn&rsquo;t SF used to have rent control? But from what you&rsquo;ve said, it doesn&rsquo;t look like that is totally justifiable for the whole workforce. That is, they aren&rsquo;t overpaid, but they aren&rsquo;t significantly underpaid, either.
Anyhow, I have no problem at all with unionized workers trying to negotiate the best deal possible for themselves. That&rsquo;s how it&rsquo;s supposed to work. But to get my sympathy** (beyond acceptance), I need to feel that they are being reasonable. I&rsquo;m not up on this at all, so I&rsquo;ll ask you: are they being reasonable?
* Anecdote: I no longer live in the Bay Area because I am retired and/or too old to get a job in my former line of work. So I moved. Sometimes we have to react to circumstances.
** I am fully aware that no BART worker gives a shit about whether I sympathize with them or not.
Workers are takers, duh. Create some jobs if you want to have a voice.