BART strike

Reform BART’s approach to labor

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By Christina Olague

OPINION If BART is part of your daily commute, you know how critical a reliable system is to Bay Area working people. If you don’t ride BART, all you have to do it think about all the cars that the system keeps off the road every day.

That’s why everyone — most of all the BART unions and their supporters — found last year’s strike so upsetting. And now, a new report commissioned in part by BART Board member James Fang shows how unnecessary it was for management to drive workers to walk off the job.

In fact, the report says, hiring a union-busting outside negotiator was a serious mistake. Allowing that hired gun to pursue an extremist bargaining strategy was a major cause of the labor unrest.

The report, conducted by an outside consultant, involved interviews with dozens of workers, managers, and negotiators. The document is riddled with references to war: Bomb-throwing, Vietnam, a labor “massacre.” It shows how badly the executive management at BART allowed the climate for negotiations to deteriorate — and how hard it will be to repair the damage.

Here’s how one manager put it: “This strike was not productive. We never did a course correction and then there was another strike. Two people got killed. We spent millions to end up getting creamed, and engendering hate.”

The report notes how BART executive management and their notorious chief negotiator refused to take seriously the concerns workers expressed about safety.

“Key points made about safety in bargaining sessions fell on deaf ears…because management thought the unions were just posturing and the unions thought the management was refusing to engage,” it states.

Safety concerns were a central part of the negotiations from the workers’ perspective, and by dismissing those concerns as a tactic, BART’s consultant not only made an agreement more difficult but gambled with the safety of workers and riders in order get concessions from workers.

Fang, head of the BART Board’s Labor Negotiation Review Committee, is asking that the board adopt the report’s recommendations to prevent this from happening again. These recommendations include more transparency around the agency’s finances, a much earlier start to negotiations — and if needed, bringing in mediators, not outside anti-union consultants.

Once the rest of our elected BART Board of Directors became more involved, management found a reasonable solution that both sides could live with. Why didn’t that happen at the beginning of negotiations?

That’s what the BART Board needs to be asking itself. A fair post-mortem puts much of the blame on management — a general manager who had little experience in labor negotiations and a board that failed to show leadership and independence.

Fang, who is the one board member who joined workers on the picket lines, says it’s time for management to change its approach. He’s calling for a strike-prevention plan that starts with honest, fair labor relations.

We’ve heard from some politicians looking to score easy points from frustrated riders that BART strikes ought to be banned. And it’s easy to imagine frustrated commuters, stuck far from work when the trains weren’t running, feeling sympathetic.

But if workers don’t have the right to strike, they are powerless to speak out against dangerous working conditions to a recalcitrant and, in this case, misdirected management. That leads to a more dangerous system for all of us.

Recognizing this, BART Board President Joel Keller just withdrew his suggestion that strikes be banned.

The much better approach for riders like me is to follow Fang’s prevention plan: Hold management accountable for its failures and to make sure that both sides can work together better in the future.

BART is a phenomenally successful system. Ridership has doubled in recent years, to 440,000 trips a day. With trained and experienced BART workers, the system’s on-time performance has risen to 95 percent. That’s not the result of some high-paid labor negotiator — it’s the work of a dedicated and hard-working staff.

If you ride BART every day, you deserve to know that the trains will be running, that you can count on the system to get you to work on time. Between now and 2017, when the next contract will be negotiated, the BART Board needs to learn from its past mistakes and find a different, more collaborative approach. Christina Olague is a community activist and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Deadly gamble

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joe@sfbg.com

As BART management and unions were locked in dysfunctional contract negotiations that would result in two strikes and two deaths last year, the district and the media scoffed at workers safety concerns and waged a media campaign demonizing the unions. Now, a new report commissioned by the district calls that strategy a horrible mistake.

The report from independent investigators Agreement Dynamics Inc., “Bay Area Rapid Transit Collective Bargaining Report and Recommendations,” reveals BART management perceived the Bay Area as anti-union. This guided its decision to hire Tom Hock as a contract negotiator and adopt a union-bashing public relations strategy that was then amplified by most local mainstream media outlets.

“In interviews, Tom Hock said he believed the strike would be very short and the unions would have to come back and reach an agreement,” the report, which was based on more than 200 hours of interviews of 60 BART employees, managers, and contractors, found. “He said media reports also heavily favored the management perspective.”

The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News attacked BART’s workers in their news and editorial pages, stoking the flames of anger. “As to union claims that this is all about safety — how stupid do they think the public is?” the Merc opined in a July 2013 editorial. The Chronicle struck a similar tone in its Oct. 18 editorial, blaming workers and writing “the walkout is the height of irresponsibility.”

The unions warned management not to run the trains during the second strike, but those safety warnings went unheeded. A contract deal was reached only after two men working on the tracks during the strike, Laurence Daniels and Christopher Sheppard, were accidentally run down during what was later revealed as a replacement driver training exercise — warnings be damned.

“Some in management believed they had a good media strategy that put the public on their side,” the report found. Therefore, “the public was angry with the unions for demanding too much in their contracts.”

BART approved a contract from big-time public relations firm Singer Associates in April last year. Sam Singer and his firm are well-known for pulling the strings of local journalists and using scorched-earth tactics. As a result, articles highlighted riders woes and selected employee salaries while discounting safety and other concerns raised by workers.

But BART management and its board had longstanding CAL-OSHA violations, some of which were the subject of labor negotiations leading up to the strike. Notably, BART’s now-defunct “simple approval” policy, by which workers verbally notified management they would be working on the tracks, was one that both workers and state regulators long urged the district to change. The two deaths were linked to that controversial practice, which BART has since ended (see “Tragedy follows strike,” 10/23/13).

State regulators have fined BART for that fatal misjudgment and a final report from the National Transportation Safety Board is expected in the coming months. Only The Nation, East Bay Express, and Bay Guardian covered BART safety concerns with any depth or gravity before the two workers’ deaths. It’s hard to tell who led the dance — did the mainstream media embolden management, or did management lead on the media? Either way, safety was not a priority for BART managers during negotiations.

“Key points made about safety in bargaining sessions, as reported to us, fell on deaf ears,” the report’s authors noted. “Management thought the unions were just posturing, and the unions thought management was refusing to engage.”

The unions, the report found, “voiced frustration that they have raised these issues repeatedly, and management was not responsive…The ‘simple approval’ policy was seen as indicative of management’s unwillingness to deal with safety concerns until two workers were killed during the second strike in 2013.”

BART’s next contract negotiation is set for 2017. The transit agency has much work to do to repair its lingering culture of distrust, but so-called unbiased media need to cop to their anti-union slants. It took two deaths to show how relevant safety concerns really were.

Golden Gate Bridge strikes won’t effect commuters…yet

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Golden Gate Bridge iron workers are on strike today [Tues/16], protesting retiree healthcare issues their union says were not addressed in 2012. Commuters will not be affected during the strike, however. Machinists Local 1414 made that choice consciously, its representative told us. 

The machinists purposefully made a decision to not impact services,” said Alex Tonisson, co-chair of the Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition. The coalition is comprised of the 13 various unions that work on the Golden Gate Bridge, all of whom negotiate with the district together. “We want the public to understand how serious things have gotten.” 

The strike started early this morning and is scheduled to end at 3:30pm. Though the strike is not directly related to current labor negotiations for health care with the district, at this point those negotiations could best be described as… rocky.

The sticking points are health care and living wages. The Golden Gate Bridge District, with a board with nine San Francisco representatives and members spanning the Bay Area, said the increases in health care costs are still competitive in the Bay Area.

The District has sought modest increases to the amount that Coalition employees have been contributing to their health benefits,” the Golden Gate Bridge District said, in a press statement. “District employees enjoy world class health benefits.”

But the unions noted that the cost of living in the Bay Area has skyrocketed. Housing prices are up, gas prices are up, everything is up. Though the district’s offer includes a 3 percent wage increase next year, and further increases in subsequent years, the new health care plan would cost 2 percent of workers’ wages, largely nullifying any increases. And the workers gave up much ground during the worst of the Great Recession.

We bargained significant concessions and changes,” in previous years, Tonisson told us. 

Strikes from the Golden Gate Bridge’s ferry workers could potentially impact thousands of Bay Area commuters. The labor coalition seemingly took lessons to heart from last year’s BART strike, when the public’s support of strikers waned in the face of nearly impossible commutes.

Tonisson didn’t directly comment on the BART strikes, but said “we’re definitely aware how any strike that shuts down the bridge or ferries impacts the lives of residents.”

To keep the commuting public aware of an impending strike, the coalition took out radio and newspaper ads, and passed out leaflets on ferry commutes. 

We’re hoping we don’t have to take further action,” Tonisson said. “We want them to understand it’s a possibility. The public should take that seriously.” 

San Francisco Democratic Party decides on endorsements for November election

At a meeting lasting about four hours last night [Wed/13], the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, the steering committee of the city’s Democratic Party, decided on its endorsements for the Nov. 4 election.

A lengthy round of voting followed nearly two hours of public comment, in which San Franciscans chimed in on everything from school board nominations to Proposition L, a motorist-friendly proposal that amounts to a step backward for the city’s transit-first policy. (The formal oppositional campaign slogan is “No on Gridlock, No on L,” but opponents who spoke at the meeting shortened it to the edgier “’L No.”).

Prop. L went down handily. Prop. E, the sugary-beverage tax, easily won the DCCC’s endorsement, as did Prop. J, the proposal to increase the city’s minimum wage.

But Prop. G – a measure crafted to stem the tide of Ellis Act evictions, known as the anti-speculation tax – was a close contest.

Before the DCCC members got down to the business of voting, many local advocates voiced support for Prop. G.

Housing activists lined up across the room while Dean Preston, executive director of Tenants Together, called for meaningful action on the city’s housing affordability crisis.

But the proponents’ show of support was followed by the opposite plea from a second group, which included a contingent of Asian property owners, who crowded into the front of the room to tell DCCC members that they felt the proposed increase was unfair. “We don’t deserve this!” A speaker said, conveying anger and frustration. “Look at our faces, we work hard for our properties.”

In the end, the vote came down to four abstentions, 13 votes for “no endorsement,” and 15 votes in support, tipping the scales in favor of Prop. G by a tiny margin.

Among those who abstained on that vote were Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jackie Speier, and Assemblymember Phil Ting, all of whom voted by proxies. Sup. Scott Wiener voted “no endorsement,” while Sup. Malia Cohen abstained.

Decisions in the races for Board of Education and the city’s Community College Board were time-consuming, since it took several elimination rounds before the final candidate lists were settled.

The school board candidates to emerge with DCCC endorsements were Shamann Walton, Emily Murase, and Trevor McNeil. Notably, that list didn’t include Hydra Mendoza, an incumbent who also serves as education advisor to Mayor Ed Lee.

Endorsements for Community College Board, meanwhile, went to Amy Bacharach for a two-year term, and Thea Selby, Anita Grier, and Rodrigo Santos for four-year terms.

Things got interesting in the contest for BART board of directors, between longtime Republican director James Fang and a well-funded Democrat, Nick Josefowitz, who is in his early 30s.

The vote was complicated since SEIU Local 1021, a labor union with a long history of backing progressive causes in San Francisco, is pulling for Fang, who supported workers during last year’s BART strike. Yet Josefowitz has the backing of other progressive organizations, including the Sierra Club. “I think that BART needs new blood,” Sierra Club representative Rebecca Evans said during public comment.

In the end, the DCCC voted “no endorsement,” with that selection getting 17 votes, five abstaining, and 10 voting in favor of Josefowitz. The votes followed a round of comments.

“The Democratic Party is a means to an end,” DCCC member Rafael Mandelman said. “And the end that we are using the Democratic Party to achieve is a more socially just and better world… There are few local entities [to advance that] than SEIU Local 1021. I think it is acceptable for us to take ‘no’ position in this race.”

Several piped up to say they thought Josefowitz deserved the endorsement of the Democratic Party simply because he’s a viable candidate and registered Democrat in a race against a Republican.

But DCCC member Arlo Hale Smith weighed in to critique of Fang’s performance as a director. “I used to hold this BART Board seat 24 years ago,” Smith said. “He’s missed a third of the meetings and he doesn’t return phone calls. He hasn’t returned my calls in a year. This is not the kind of person who should be reelected. Period.”

In races for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and citywide offices, endorsements went to incumbents Carmen Chu for assessor-recorder, Jeff Adachi for public defender, Sups. Mark Farrell for District 2, Katy Tang for District 4, Jane Kim for District 6, Wiener for District 8, and Malia Cohen for District 10. No second- or third-place endorsements were made in the Board of Supervisors races despite multiple challengers.

Just before voting for endorsements began, DCCC member Alix Rosenthal admonished her colleagues for scant attendance during the candidate endorsement interviews, which were held the previous Saturday. “Only 12 out of 32 people showed up for interviews,” she noted. Half-jokingly, she added, “I know Outside Lands was happening.”

The last Republican

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steve@sfbg.com

BART Director James Fang is San Francisco’s only elected official who is a registered Republican, yet over the last 24 years, he has somehow managed to easily win election after election in a city dominated by the Democratic Party, often with the endorsements of top Democrats.

But this year, Fang is facing a strong and well-funded challenge from investor and former solar company entrepreneur Nicholas Josefowitz, a Harvard graduate in his early 30s. Thanks in part to support from the tech community — Lyft cofounder Logan Green is one of several prominent figures in tech to host fundraisers for him, according to Re/Code — Josefowitz has managed to amass a campaign war chest of about $150,000.

Josefowitz has also secured some key political endorsements, including from Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Scott Wiener, BART Director Tom Radulovich, former SF Mayor Art Agnos, and the Sierra Club.

After Josefowitz sold his solar company, RenGen, almost two years ago, “I got more and more involved in sustainable community advocacy,” he told us. “Then the BART strike happened and I was like, wow, this shouldn’t be happening.”

Josefowitz cited BART’s history of worker safety violations, last year’s unnecessarily divisive labor contract negotiations, the district’s massive deferred maintenance budget, property devoted to parking lots that could be put to better uses (he sees potential there for real-estate development), corrupt cronyism in its contracting, and lack of cooperation with other transit agencies as problems that urgently need correcting.

Fang is being challenged by well-funded Democratic newcomer Nicholas Josefowitz.

“BART does a terrible job at coordinating with other transit agencies,” Josefowitz told us, arguing the transit connections should be timed and seamless. “James has been there for 24 years, and if he was going to be the right guy to fix it, then he would have done it by now.”

But perhaps Josefowitz’s strongest argument is that as a Republican in liberal San Francisco, Fang’s values are out-of-step with those of voters. “Why is someone still a Republican today? … He’s a Republican and he’s a Republican in 2014, with everything that means,” Josefowitz told us. “He hasn’t been looking out for San Francisco and he’s out of touch with San Francisco values.”

We asked Fang why he’s a Republican. After saying it shouldn’t matter as far as the nonpartisan BART board race is concerned, he told us that when he was in college, he and his friends registered Republican so they could vote for John Anderson in the primary election.

“Some people feel the expedient thing for me to is switch parties,” Fang said, but “I think it’s a loyalty thing. If you keep changing … what kind of message does that send to people?”

Fang said he thought the focus ought to be on his track record, not his political affiliation. It shouldn’t matter “if it’s a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice,” he said. He pointed to programs such as seismic upgrades, completing the BART to the airport project, and instituting a small-business preference for BART contractors as evidence of his strong track record. “I’m a native San Franciscan — I’ve gone through all the public schools,” Fang added. “It’s very important to get people from a San Francisco perspective and San Francisco values.”

Josefowitz supporters say he has perhaps the best shot ever at defeating Fang, largely because of his prodigious fundraising and aggressive outreach efforts on the campaign trail. “He is doing all the things that someone should do to win the race,” Radulovich, San Francisco’s other longtime elected representative on the BART board, told us. “There’s a lot of unhappiness with BART these days.”

But in an interesting political twist, Fang has the endorsement of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, a champion of many progressive causes in San Francisco, after he walked the picket line with striking BART employees last year and opposed the district’s decision to hire a high-priced, union-busting labor consultant.

“It’s a priority for us to elect Fang,” SEIU 1021 organizer Gabriel Haaland told us. “When we needed him on the strike, he walked our picket line.”

SEIU Political Chair Alysabeth Alexander sounded a similar note. “In the middle of one of the most important and highest-profile labor fights in the nation, when two workers had to die to prove that safety issues were the heart of the struggle, Fang was the only board member who took a position for safety,” she said. “Every other member shut out the workers and refused to acknowledge that serious safety issues put workers lives at risk every day. If more BART Board members has the courage of Fang, two workers would be alive today.”

BART got a series of public black eyes last year when its contract standoff with its employees resulted in two labor strikes that snarled traffic and angered the public. Then two BART employees were killed by a train operated by an unqualified manager being trained to deliver limited service to break the strike, a tragedy that highlighted longstanding safety deficiencies that the district had long fought with state regulators to avoid correcting. Finally, after that fatal accident helped force an end to the labor standoff, BART officials admitted making an administrative error in the contract that reopened the whole ugly incident.

“One of the things that really opened my eyes in this labor negotiation is that often we get told things by management, and we just assume them to be true,” Fang said, noting that he’d questioned the agency’s plan to run train service during last year’s strike.

Yet Josefowitz said the BART board should be held accountable for the agency’s shortcomings in dealing with its workers. “It starts with having a genuine concern over worker safety issues, and not just at bargaining time,” he said. “If the board had acted early enough, that strike was totally avoidable.”

Indeed, BART’s decisions that led to the tragedy have been heavily criticized by the National Transportation Safety Board, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, and the California Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment.

Fang also has the support of many top Democrats, including Attorney General Kamala Harris, US Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and former state legislator and current Board of Equalization candidate Fiona Ma, who told us: “I have endorsed one Republican in my political history, and that is James Fang for BART Board.” Noting that Josefowitz “just moved here,” Ma said, “The BART system is one of our jewels, and I don’t think we should elect first-time newcomers in San Francisco to manage it.”

Radulovich said he was mystified by prominent San Francisco politicians’ support for Fang, saying, “In this solidly Democratic town, this elected Republican has the support of these big Democrats — it’s a mystery to me.”

One reason could be Fang’s willingness to use newspapers under his control to support politicians he favors, sometimes in less than ethical ways. Fang is the president of Asian Week and former owner of the San Francisco Examiner, where sources say he shielded from media scrutiny politicians who helped him gain control of the paper, including Willie Brown and Pelosi (see “The untouchables,” 4/30/03).

But political consultant Nicole Derse, who is working on the Josefowitz campaign, told us that she thinks support for Fang among top Democrats is softening this year, noting that US Sen. Dianne Feinstein and state Sen. Mark Leno haven’t endorsed Fang after doing so in previous races.

“[Fang] has longstanding relationships with folks, but Nick is challenging people in this race to stop supporting the Republican,” Derse told us. “It’s now up to the Democratic Party and it’ll be interesting to see what they do.”

She was referring to the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, which plans to vote on its endorsements on Aug. 13. While DCCC bylaws prevent the body from endorsing a Republican, Ma and other Fang allies have been lobbying for no endorsement in the race, which would deny Josefowitz a key avenue for getting his name and message out there.

“This is going to be one of the most expensive races in BART’s history. He will kill me on money,” Fang said of Josefowitz. He suggested that his opponent’s candidacy underscores tech’s growing influence in local politics, and urged voters to take a closer look. “People are saying oh, it’s all about Fang. What about this gentleman?” Fang asked. “Nobody’s questioning him at all.”

Derse, for her part, noted the importance of having a well-funded challenge in this nonpartisan race. “It allows him the resources to get his message out there,” she said of Josefowitz. “Most San Franciscans wouldn’t knowingly vote for a Republican.”

 

Muni sickout: Q&A with transit union president

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It’s fair to say San Francisco is sick of the sickout.

Three days after hundreds of Muni workers called in sick to work, crippling the city’s transit system, City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a legal action against Muni workers’ union to end the pseudo-strike. 

Just as Herrera announced his intentions, the Bay Guardian sat down at the Transit Workers Unit local 250-A for an interview with Eric Williams, president of Muni’s worker union. 

Here are William’s answers to our questions. Pick up a copy of next week’s paper for a broader story on the Muni sickout and union backlash in San Francisco.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Thanks for sitting down with me. This is obviously a contentious time for Muni workers. But let’s hear how this all started: What’s the nitty-gritty contract disagreement between the SFMTA and the union?

Eric Williams: We don’t have a problem paying our pension, despite what’s being said. We would like a fair even swap, just like everyone else had. The police, the fire department, every union in this city got a fair swap to help pay their own pension. Right now they want to offer us a bump to pay our own pension, but once we got our CPA to crunch the numbers, it’s all negative.

The city wants you to beleive it’s cost-neutral, but that’s not the case. Our members will be making $1.10 less an hour due to this negotiation. 

SFBG So you’ve said before that certain laws and codes have “stacked the deck” in negotiations against the union, in favor of the SFMTA. How does that work?

EW You have to read Prop G [regarding Muni operators’ salaries] and code A8.409 [prohibiting strikes] and say “is this fair?” 

We’re struggling, we’re coming into a negoatiaion with our hands tied behind our back. The beauracracy and the spinning of the words and statements is alive in the agency. 

It’s unfortunate the public thinks it’s the common workers’ fault on any of these issues. Our members have to take care of our families, our children, paying for college, just like you. 

[Proponents of Prop. G said] “Well, it will make everything fair.” Actually, it’s not.

A ten-minute video interview with TWU Local 255-A President Eric Williams, as he explains the motivations behind the sickout.

SFBG Let’s get into that a bit more. So you walk into a negotiation, you bring a proposal. The way most union negotiations work is two parties sit down and present proposals, but the Muni worker/SFMTA negotiation is unique. You have to prove something to the arbitrator. What do you have to prove?

EW Basically, we have to show we’re not going to be costly to the agency. But inflation is going up, how could we not be costly?

 We just want restrooms, but those are costly. We want raises, those are costly. We want better parking, that’s costly.

The arbitrator must side with the city if they feel the cost burden will be too high on the city. All SFMTA employees are under the same deal. I’ve been at four tables in the past few months and negotiated two contracts with parties other than the SFMTA. We had to go to mediation, those mediators told us to talk it over again (offering compromise). You take this proposal, you take this one. That’s not the case with the SFMTA negotiations.

SFBG Can Muni workers afford to live in San Francisco?

EW Definitely not. The only members that live inside the city are those who purchased a home 20 or so years ago. The majority of our members live outside the city. That’s what leads to the issue of transportation and parking. If you’re pulling a bus run at 5:30 in the morning, guess what, there’s no bus at 4am to get them there. They need parking. It’s poor or rich in this city, there’s no in between. That’s no secret.

SFBG How far back would you have to go to say a good strong bloc of members lived in the city?

EW At least 20-30 years. Early ’90s, ’80s. 

SFBG Let’s talk about the atmosphere with riders out there. We recently saw a BART strike, did you take a read on the reaction? The sickout, which seems similar … people seem to not be siding with the union on this. There’s a lot of animosity.

EW We thought people understood who were in charge of the economics. It’s unfortunate the public may believe it’s the common workers’ fault on the issues. 

If you look at the bargaining with BART, yes it caused frustration. Yes it did. But when you see them empathizing with the power, “yes we know this hurts, but we have a family too.” The only thing we can do is ring the bell and say “this is unfair.”

SFBG Do you feel there is a backlash against Muni workers for the sickout?

EW Honestly i couldn’t tell the difference, we’ve been drug over the coals for so long. The frustration you’ve seen the past few days, not brought by the union itself, but by the members, is real. 

But in reality our members encounter something different with the everyday riders. The mothers, the fathers, [they have] a different attitude. Of course we have that 10, 20 percent that no matter what we do, who say we’re wrong. But we have to take a stand as well. We’re important here. We take our jobs seriously, and we should be treated as such. 

[Those who disagree with us] need to challenge the agency on everything the agency tells them. The system is still not on time, you still don’t have enough employees to drive the buses on the ground. The SFMTA spends all this money but we’re not on time, we don’t have enough people. 

Those 10-20 percent [who disagree with the workers] need to read the charter. Any person with common sense, any person with a heart, ask themselves if that process is fair. 

SFBG You don’t think part of it is the view that Muni workers make much more than private sector workers?

EW There’ve always been good private sector employers out there. But unions got us weekends, unions got us better working hours, unions got you sick leave. But go out and ask how they feel, what they think the public’s issue with us because we’re making $60,000 a year, and you went to college for four years. Maybe it’s because we’re making a living, and you’re struggling. Well hey, come get a job as a bus driver if it’s that bad out there.

 

SFBG Wrap, April 16-23

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BART FINED FOR WORKERS’ DEATHS

The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined Bay Area Rapid Transit for three “willful/serious” safety violations in connection with the death of two transit workers last October, saying BART is at fault due to a lack of safety measures.

“Safety standards are designed to save lives,” acting Cal/OSHA chief Juliann Sum said in a statement, “and they were not followed.”

The transit workers were killed in the final days of the BART strike. The accident claimed the lives of Christopher Sheppard, a BART manager and member of the AFSCME union, and Larry Daniels, a contractor, who had been inspecting a “dip in the rail” before they were hit by an oncoming train.

The workers were required to go through what’s called a Simple Approval process to get permission to work on the track, but the OSHA citation seized on that process as a dangerous underlying factor in the fatal accident.

“Employer’s control method, namely the ‘Simple Approval’ procedure, does not safeguard personnel working on tracks during railcar movement,” the citation reads. “The employer allowed workers to conduct work on the railway tracks where trains were traveling. The employees had no warning that a train moving at more than 65 miles-per-hour was … approaching the location where they were working.”

BART General Manager Grace Crunican quickly issued a statement. “Passenger and employee safety is our top priority at BART,” Crunican said. “BART has fundamentally upgraded its safety procedures with the implementation of an enhanced wayside safety program and a proposed budget investment of over $5 million.” She added that Cal/OSHA considered the safety violations to be “abated” in light of these changes, “meaning that none … pose continuing safety hazards.”

Simple Approval has since been terminated, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told the Guardian. “BART permanently eliminated Simple Approval immediately following the tragic deaths,” she said. “We are also implementing the extra layers of protection for track workers.”

Notably, the two workers were killed during BART management’s attempt to train managers to operate trains during the strike, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which continues to investigate the incident. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

SORRY STATE OF PUBLIC HOUSING

Sup. London Breed has proposed setting aside city funding to renovate vacant and dilapidated public housing units, in an effort to quickly make housing available for homeless families in the face of a dire shortage.

At the April 15 Board of Supervisor’s meeting, Breed cited an anticipated budget surplus and called for the Controller and City Attorney to begin drafting a supplemental budgetary appropriation of $2.6 million, for renovating 172 San Francisco Housing Authority units sitting vacant.

“There are over 40 public housing developments in San Francisco, and given the decades of mismanagement and financial neglect that public housing has endured, many units are currently not available for San Franciscans to live in,” Breed said. “As we grapple with an unprecedented affordability crisis and an acute shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing, these fallow public housing units represent one of our best and cheapest opportunities to make housing available now.” Breed, who represents District 5, previously lived in San Francisco public housing.

The Housing Authority receives its funding through the federal government, but spokesperson Rose Marie Dennis said those federal dollars don’t stretch far enough for the agency to perform routine restoration of vacant units. “We have to work with the resources that we have,” she said.

According to an analysis by Budget & Legislative Analyst Harvey Rose, the city has lost $6.3 million in rent that could have been collected had its empty public housing units been occupied.

The day after Breed floated her proposal for a budgetary supplemental, tragedy struck at Sunnydale, the Housing Authority’s largest housing development, when a deadly fire claimed the lives of a 32-year-old resident and her 3-year-old son. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but a San Francisco Chronicle report noted that the Housing Authority had planned to rebuild Sunnydale for years due to its poor condition.

The following day, April 17, Mayor Ed Lee announced that emergency funding of $5.4 million had been identified through the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, to address serious deferred maintenance needs — such as busted elevators in apartment complexes where disabled seniors rely on wheelchairs and canes to get around. (Rebecca Bowe)

SUPES OUTFOX LANDLORDS

When the San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave final approval April 15 for legislation to substantially increase landlord payments to tenants in the case of Ellis Act evictions, it reflected a key change designed to counter a recent eviction push by landlords.

Winning approval on a 9-2 vote, with Sups. Mark Farrell and Katy Tang opposed, the legislation increases the current required relocation payments of $5,265 per person or $15,795 per unit (plus an additional $3,510 for those with disabilities or over age 62) up to the equivalent of two years’ rent for a comparable unit. That translates to tens of thousands of dollars.

For example, the Controller’s Office calculates that a family evicted from a two-bedroom apartment in the Mission District rented at $909 per month would be entitled to $44,833 in relocation payment.

The legislation was originally scheduled to go into effect 120 days after passage, in order to give city officials enough time to implement it. But when sponsoring Sup. David Campos heard landlords were rushing to evict tenants prior to the fee increase, he checked in with the City Attorney’s Office and other departments to see whether they could be ready sooner. After getting the green light, Campos amended the measure to go into effect 30 days after it’s enacted into law.

The question now is whether Mayor Ed Lee, who has not taken a position on the legislation, will act quickly to sign it. He was initially given 10 days to decide. Since a veto-proof majority approved the legislation, the mayor’s decision is to either grant approval or stall the inevitable, triggering more evictions at lower levels of relocation assistance. (Steven T. Jones)

POLICE TAPES BROUGHT TO LIGHT

Police radio dispatch records from March 21, the night 28-year-old Alejandro Nieto was gunned down in Bernal Heights Park by San Francisco Police Department officers, had been impossible to obtain despite requests from journalists, attorneys, and community members who had ties to Nieto.

Then, incredibly — thanks to a combination of tenacious reporting and the website Broadcastify.com — the radio dispatch audio popped up in a news report on KQED’s website.

Originally captured in real-time by a website works like an automatic police scanner and preserves all files, the recordings offer a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse of what occurred in the moments leading up to the highly controversial officer-involved shooting.

The SFPD’s account of the incident is that officers opened fire in defense of their own lives because Nieto pointed a Taser at them, causing them to believe he was tracking them with a firearm.

But the audio files that have now surfaced reflect no mention of a suspect brandishing a weapon.

The first mention of a “221” — police code for person with a gun — is to relate a 911 caller’s description of a Latino male suspect, who has “got a gun on his hip, and is pacing back and forth on the north side of the park near a chain-linked fence.” Just before the shooting, a voice can be heard saying over the radio, “There’s a guy in a red shirt, way up the hill, walking toward you guys.” Several seconds later, another voice calmly states, “I got a guy right here.”

Twenty-six seconds after that, a person can be heard shouting, “Shots fired! Shots fired!”

“What’s very telling is that none of the people are saying, the guy had a gun, he pointed it at us,” said attorney Adante Pointer of the law office of John Burris, which is preparing to file a complaint on behalf of Nieto’s family against the SFPD. “It begs the question, did [Nieto] do what they said he did?”

“If this was a righteous shooting,” Pointer added, “then [SFPD] … shouldn’t have any fear of public scrutiny.”

Friends and supporters of Nieto have led marches to protest the shooting and set up a website for ongoing events, justice4alexnieto.org. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

BART fined $210,000 for accident killing two workers

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The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration is fining Bay Area Rapid Transit $210,000 for three “willful/serious” safety violations connected to the death of two transit workers, citing a lack of safety measures at BART as the fault of their deaths. BART was fined maximum amounts allowed for the offenses, officials said. 

“Employers have a responsibility to ensure worker safety,” acting Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum said in a statement. “Safety standards are designed to save lives and they were not followed.”

Two transit workers were killed October last year during the final days of the BART strike. As we reported then, Christopher Sheppard, a BART manager and member of the AFSCME union, and Larry Daniels, a contractor, were inspecting a “dip in the rail” before they were hit by an oncoming train. The two workers were required to go through what’s called a Simple Approval process to get permission to work on the track.

It’s that Simple Approval process that came under fire in the citation.

“Employer’s control method, namely the ‘Simple Approval’ procedure, does not safeguard personnel working on tracks during railcar movement,” the citation reads. “The employer allowed workers to conduct work on the railway tracks where trains were travelling in excess of sixty-five (65) miles-per-hour.”

“The employees had no warning that a train moving at more than 65 miles-per-hour was on the C1 railway track approaching the location where they were working.”

BART General Manager Grace Crunican quickly issued a statement.

“Passenger and employee safety is our top priority at BART.  BART has fundamentally upgraded its safety procedures with the implementation of an enhanced wayside safety program and a proposed budget investment of over $5 million in additional resources to bolster BART’s safety performance,” she said. “Cal/OSHA has informed BART these changes correct the concerns which are at the heart of their citations, designating the issues as ‘abated,’ meaning that none are continuing violations or pose continuing safety hazards.”

The statement goes on to say that BART meets CPUC safety standards, though as we’ve seen with PG&E (San Bruno) and Uber (the New Year’s Eve death of Sofia Liu), those standards have been demonstrated to be at times, lax. 

The three violations were deemed “abated” within the citaiton. The citation tasked BART with reassigning job assignments of untrained personell, not allowing unqualified workers near energized equipment and facilities, and “controls to safeguard personell during railcar movement shall be instituted.”

Simple Approval has since been terminated, BART Spokesperson Alicia Trost told the Guardian.

BART permanantly eliminated Simple Approval immediately following the tragic deaths,” she said. “We now require work orders for anyone who goes wayside.  We are also implementing the extra layers of protection for track workers.”

Notably, the two workers were killed as BART management attempted to train managers to operate trains during the strike, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, who is investigating the incident.

lighting

Left, a dimly lit BART tunnel. Right, an oncoming train. BART has been cited for safety issues by CAL/OSHA before, including lighting issues which some say led to the death of another BART worker years ago.

The citation specifically lambasts flimsy safety process of Simple Approval, the process workers formerly used to keep the Operations Control Center “aware of the presence of personnel in a specified location in the trackway,” according to BART training manuals. When workers are preparing to work on a track, they recited the simple approval to the Operations Control Center, also known as central control. It works like signing a waiver, saying that you understand the rules of safety, and more importantly, that you can work on the track without diverting trains. 

This isn’t the first time BART has run afoul of CAL/OSHA citations, they’ve racked up over 20 in the past years. A hearing held shortly after the two workers’ death also brought many of these problems to light.

Shortly after the accident, Saul Almanza, a longtime BART safety trainer, told us the section of track the two workers died on crested the hill a little bit.” Having a sight line is important, he said, because you can’t use your ears to hear a train coming.

“It’s like a jet flying over you, you don’t hear it until it’s past you,” he explained. “I always teach in my class: ‘You don’t listen for trains, you look for trains.’”

Below we’ve embedded the citations issued to BART.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) citations for death of two workers from CAL/OSHA by FitztheReporter

BART approves contract as tensions with its workers continue UPDATED

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The BART Board of Directors today approved a modified contract with its two biggest labor unions, an action that received faint praise and was followed up with implied threats from both sides, continuing one of the ugliest and most impactful Bay Area labor disputes in recent memory.

The four-year contract approved today resolves a dispute over a paid family leave provision that BART officials say was mistakenly included in the contract that the unions negotiated and approved in November following two strikes and two workers being killed by a train that was being used to train possible replacement drivers on Oct. 19.

Recent negotiations yielded a contract with seven new provisions favorable to workers, including a $500 per employee bonus if ridership rises in the next six months and more pension and flex time options, in exchange for eliminating six weeks of paid leave for family emergencies.

The new contract was approved on a 8-1, with new Director Zakhary Mallett the lone dissenting vote, continuing his staunchly anti-union stance. Newly elected President Joel Keller was quoted in a district statement put out afterward pledging to change the “process” to prevent future strikes.  

“The Bay Area has been put through far too much and we owe it to our riders and the public to make the needed reforms to our contract negotiations process so mistakes are avoided in the future. I will appoint a new Board committee to investigate the policies and practices of labor negotiations and will make recommendations to the Board and the General Manager on how we can improve the process,” Keller said.

But from labor’s perspective, the problem wasn’t the “process,” but the actions taken by the Board of Directors; General Manager Grace Crunican; and Thomas Hock, the union-busting labor negotiator they hired for $400,000 — and the decision by BART to practice bargaining table brinksmanship backed up by a fatally flawed proposal to run limited replacement service to try to break the second strike.

A statement by SEIU Local 1021 Executive Director Pete Castelli put out after the vote began, “Today’s Board vote incrementally restores the faith that the riders and workers have lost in the Board of Directors, but it’s not enough to fix the damage they’ve caused to our communities.”

It goes on the blame the district for the strikes and closes with a vague threat to target the four directors who are up for election this year: Keller, James Fang, Thomas Blalock, and Robert Raburn (whose reelection launch party last month was disrupted by union members).

“Today BART is less safe and less reliable because of the Directors’ reckless leadership,” Castelli said. “Something has to change in order for all of us to regain our confidence in BART, and it starts with having BART Directors who are committed to strengthening the transportation system we all rely on and who prioritize its workers’ and riders’ safety. We look forward to the opportunity to work with our communities and to elect Directors who are committed to improving service and safety to all who depend on BART.”

Asked whether the union was indeed threatening to get involved in those four elections this year, spokesperson Cecille Isidro told the Guardian, “You’re absolutely right, that’s exactly what we’re trying to project.”

Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly took the threat a step further, singling out Mallett as by far the most caustic and anti-union director, saying the union is currently considering launching a recall campaign against Mallett, although that could be complicated by the fact that he represents pieces of three counties: San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa.

“He is so out-of-touch with the region. When he was elected, people didn’t know what they were getting,” Daly said, noting that voters elected Mallett over longtime incumbent Lynette Sweet in 2012 mostly out of opposition to her and not support for him. The Bay Guardian and others who endorsed Mallett have been critical of Mallett’s erratic actions since then, which included trying to raise fares within San Francisco without required social equity studies before becoming the most dogmattic critic of BART’s employee unions.

Daly was also particularly critical of Keller, who he accused of using today’s vote “to roll out his reelection campaign” with an anti-worker tenor. Neither Keller nor Mallett immediately responded to Guardian requests for comment, but we’ll update this post if and when we hear from them [see UPDATE below].

Daly cited a litany of grievances that could be corrected by new blood on a board that has seen little changeover in the modern era, from hiring Crunican (who Daly called “a terrible hire”) and Hock to conflating the district’s capital and operating budgets during the current negotiations, trying to expand the system on the backs of workers using an aggressive media strategy.

“The experience of the last 8-10 months elevates the importance of these BART Board races,” Daly told us. “They spent about $1 million to basically malign their workers and improve their negotiating position on the contract.”

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost denied that the district has been hostile to it workers, telling the Guardian, “From the beginning, we negotiated in good faith and we always tried to strike a balance between investing in the employees and investing in the system.”

In addition to the unions targeting directors in this November’s election, the district is also awaiting a ruling from the National Transportation Safety Board on its responsibility for the Oct. 19 fatalities, as well as facing scrutiny from the California Legislature, particularly its Joint Legislative Audit Committee and the Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment, whose members criticized BART’s lax safety culture during a Nov. 7 hearing.

Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-SF) called that hearing and criticized BART officials there for failing to provide requested safety information, requiring them to submit that information in writing, which he says still wasn’t adequte. “It was very difficult to decipher,” Ting told the Guardian recently.

Once the Legislature comes back into session on Jan. 6, Ting said that, “We’ll have a clearer idea whether we need more hearings.”

Meanwhile, SEIU Local 1021 members are slated to vote on the latest BART contract on Jan. 13.

UPDATE 1/3: Keller got back to us and admitted that if the unions really target him for removal in a serious way, “they’ll probably be successful.” He was fatalistic about that possibility, repeatedly voicing acceptance of that prospect: “If I lose my seat over this, I lose my seat.”

And by “this,” Keller means the likelihood that he’ll push for prohibiting BART employees from going on strike, which he said is already the case with the country’s four largest systems — Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Washington DC — which have deemed transit an essential service.

“Large transit agencies do not allow their employees to strike,” Keller said, noting that the San Francisco City Charter also bans transit strikes, something he pointed out Daly didn’t alter during his tenure on the Board of Supervisors.

And Keller said he’s willing to risk his seat to make that change: “I feel my responsibility is to use my remaining time to break this dysfunction labor process.”

Keller also said that there were mistakes on both sides during BART’s labor impasse, including BART’s decision to train replacement drivers to offer service between Oakland and San Francisco during a strike. “Maybe the prospect of training replacement drivers was a mistake, and I’ll accept that responsibility,” Keller told us.

He explained the ill-fated decision by saying, “We were in a hardball environment,” which he said both sides contributed to.  

Unions suing BART board over contract disagreement today, no strike yet

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Two of BART’s largest unions will announce a lawsuit against the BART board of directors today on the steps of the Alameda County Superior Court at 11am, which they plan to file shortly before the press conference.

The suit will directly challenge the board’s Nov. 21 decision to ratify a contract between the unions and BART management without a hotly contested provision on family leave.

In their announcement of the suit, SEIU Local 1021 and ATU Local 1555 allege the board made “illegitimate and unprecedented actions” in ratifying the contract while removing a section on family leave, which was signed off on by BART management in July. Under the provision, workers who go on leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act would be paid for six of the 12 weeks the law allows them to take unpaid. 

Management has since called signing off on family leave a “mistake,” and the board asked all sides to ratify a contract without the provision, hence the lawsuit.

But would a lawsuit mean a new strike?

“That’s what everybody is asking,” SEIU Local 1021 spokesperson Cecille Isidro told the Guardian. “The unions aren’t ruling out any options, but no strike is being called or scheduled at this time.”

BART spokesperson Luna Salaver told the Guardian last month that “it was a mistake that a provision rejected twice by BART management ended up in the stack of approved documents.” She noted that it was caught as the district prepared to give the contract final approval on Nov. 21, though it was already signed by the two unions.

“We were never confused as to the status of the Family and Medical Leave Act agreement,” Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told the Guardian, in our earlier coverage, which you can read here.

Isidro said more details on the lawsuit would be available at the press conference at 11am. 

ATU Local president Antoinette Bryant responds to family leave “mistake” at a press conference.

BART standoff continues as board modifies contract

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The BART Board of Directors voted 8-1 on Nov. 21, with conservative young Director Zakhary Mallett in dissent, to approve a hard-won contract with its unions, after removing Section 4.8, the paid family leave section that the district says was inserted by mistake.

The motion also directed management to negotiate a settlement over that issue with its unions, which have already approved the contract and now must decide whether they are willing to do so again without that provision or whether the possibility of another BART strike is once again looming.

The next day, BART’s largest unions, SEIU Local 1021 and ATU Local 1555, issued a joint statement: “We consider the Board’s actions to be unprecedented and illegitimate, and we’re considering our next steps, including possible legal action. The BART Board of Directors has disregarded the vote of more than 2,000 BART workers and has chosen to subvert the collective bargaining process, and we take their actions seriously.”

After meeting in closed session for about two hours, Vice President Joel Keller began the open session with a motion to remove Section 4.8 from the contract, approve the rest, and direct management to negotiate with the unions.

Mallett, the 25-year-old newbie who lives in unincorporated West Contra Costa County but whose District 7 includes part of San Francisco, spoke first: “Even before this hiccup, I was not in the position to support this contract. I find it too costly.”

But he was the only one to take that stance, with the rest of the directors calling the underlying contract a fair compromise, even if all said they couldn’t support the paid family leave provision that would add anywhere between $4 million and $44 million to a contract that was already going to cost the district an additional $67 million.

Director Gail Murray noted that the unions had given up raises for years when BART had budget deficits, and now that the district is running surpluses, it’s reasonable to give workers raises that amount to about 2 percent per year for four years.

“Our employees kept the system going…They’re the reason why we keep 40-year-old cars still running,” Murray said, later adding, “To say this contract is not a good contract is wrong.”

The rest of the board agreed, even while acknowledging it is more than they hoped to pay given the district’s capital needs and aggressive expansion plans.

“We’re probably paying more for this than we anticipated we would pay, and labor is probably giving up more than they want to, but that’s the nature of collective bargaining,” Keller said, who also began what turned into a chorus of criticism for how district negotiators signed off on a provision the board never agreed to.

“We ended on a sloppy note and that’s regrettable,” Keller said, pledging that if he’s elected president next month — an ascension that is customary for the vice president — he plans to launch a full investigation into what happened.

“I’m pained that we put ourselves in such adversarial positions with each other and that we lost the lives of two employees,” Director John McPartland said of the protracted labor negotiations and the fatalities that occurred while the unions were on strike Oct. 19. He called the contract “more than fair and equitable.”

Director James Fang, who represents western San Francisco, sounded the strongest criticisms of BART management and negotiators. “Yes, it was a mistake, but nobody has come forward and said ‘there was a mistake and I’m responsible,” Fang said, later adding, “The ones who signed this must be held to account.”

Fang then went further, albeit without specifics, when he said, “Every bit of management advice we’ve received has not worked out to the district’s best interests.”

Director Robert Raburn echoed Fang’s calls for accountability: “I’m still not clear on how that [contract provision] arrived and it hasn’t been accounted for by anyone at the district who said ‘I am responsible.'”

But he also said that the provision was clearly an error and not something arrived at through the negotiations: “Both parties agreed on a $67 million package and we should keep that intact because it’s fair.”

Reached by the Guardian while union leadership was conferring to plan next steps, SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told us, “We are about as up in the air as we’ve ever been.”

He called it “unlikely” that union leadership would simply submit the board-revised contract to an up-or-down vote by union membership, saying that he doesn’t think it would be approved.

And Daly echoed the concerns expressed by several BART directors about how this mistake happened and why nobody has taken responsibility or been held accountable: “If I were on that board, I’d have the general manager’s head, there’s no two ways about it.” (Steven T. Jones)

SF General reduces psych care

A 22-bed psychiatric unit at San Francisco General Hospital will be taken out of service, and reopened only if the facility experiences a high caseload of patients exhibiting the worst signs of psychiatric crisis.

As of Nov. 19, five patients were receiving care in that unit, 7B, according to spokesperson Rachael Kagan. None had symptoms that rose to the level of requiring acute care. Instead, they were classified as sub-acute patients, a distinction that essentially means they didn’t present an immediate threat to themselves or others.

But under a new policy that will take effect after they have been released, all 22 beds in 7B will be closed — unless they are needed for acute patients who do reach that critical threshold. The unit will be staffed only if patients can’t be accommodated in the hospital’s other acute psych unit, which has 21 beds.

The decision was made in response to a changing financial picture under federal health care reform, Kagan explained.

“There is a big push … to ensure hospitals are only providing acute care,” Kagan said, and this trend is driving efforts to reduce sub-acute patients. “It fiscally makes more sense,” she added, because insurers pay higher rates for acute care than for lower levels of treatment.

Yet some hospital staff members are nervous about the implications of this shift, because it means fewer patients will be able to access psychiatric care at SF General unless they represent a danger to themselves and/or the general public — at a time when demand for these services is on the rise.

“To us, it’s a matter of priority for the city,” said Brenda Barros, an employee at SF General who is active with hospital union SEIU 1021. “Do you want to take care of these people, or don’t you?”

Some staff members are doubtful that 7B will reopen. An internal SF General memo issued Nov. 18 informed the 7B staff: “Our census will be gradually reduced until we won’t have any more patients. Then 7B will be closed.” The memo added, “this came from [SF General CEO] Sue Currin due to budgetary constraints.”

However, a second internal memo went out the following day, to “clarify” the first one. In that message, Nursing Director Kathy Ballou wrote: “We are not closing psych beds or any beds.” Instead, beds in 7B would be closed unless “we get acute patients needing that level of care,” she wrote. “As in other hospitals, we are accountable to our operating budget.”

Further complicating matters, said Barros, is that patients can fluctuate rapidly between needing acute care and a lower level of attention. “They absolutely can swing back and forth.” She added that patients initially requiring a lower level of care could experience worsening conditions if they’re unable to secure an appointment in time to get help, and delays are very common.

Kagan emphasized that the unit wasn’t being closed down, but did confirm that sub-acute patients would no longer be able to receive treatment in 7B. Instead, those patients will be placed with various service providers throughout the city, she said. “The goal is to move the patients to their appropriate placement.”

Meanwhile, this shift coincides with an overall rise in citywide demand for psychiatric services. According to a report delivered to the Police Commission earlier this year, SF General had 6,293 patient admissions for psychiatric holds in 2012, a sharp increase from 5,837 in 2009.

While there were deep cuts to the city’s Department of Public Health during the economic downturn, Mayor Ed Lee has recently trumpeted a boost to city coffers thanks to growing economic activity. But if the city’s financial health has improved, it seems odd that its safety-net hospital would be put into the position of reducing psych care due to budgetary pressures when that kind of care is sorely needed.

For Barros, it’s a matter of whether or not city officials will decide to allocate more funding for mental health services. “If they don’t have enough money in Public Health,” she said, “then they need to put more into Public Health.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Lessons of the BART standoff

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EDITORIAL BART and its unions reached a tentative deal on new contracts late Monday (10/21) night, the next day restoring service that had been disrupted by the second four-day strike this year. Now, it’s time for everyone to move on from this impasse — and the ugly demonization of workers that accompanied it — and try to heal the damage that was done.

Sadly, it appears to have taken the senseless deaths of two BART employees on Oct. 19 to reinforce the safety concerns that unions have raised from the beginning, undermine critics’ belittling claims that “the trains run themselves” and don’t need trained workers, and back the district down from its aggressive brinksmanship and preparations to run limited service during what could have been a long strike.

There are still many questions to be answered. Was the district forcing a strike with its “final offer” and last minute decision to seek more authority over work rules? Would it really have offered service to the public using scab drivers? Was the driver training that was happening on that ill-fated train a factor in the tragedy?

We may not have a definitive answer to that last question for quite awhile, but we already learned from the NTSB that BART officials were deceiving the general public when they claimed the train was simply on a maintenance run to remove graffiti and when they offered misleading answers to the Guardian’s direct questions about whether driver training was being done.

Unfortunately, that was just the latest example of a pattern of behavior unbefitting of officials in a public agency. It began with the decision to pay almost $400,000 to a notoriously anti-union contract negotiator. It continued through stall tactics and an aggressive public relations strategy. And it culminated with seeking sweeping authority over work rules at the 11th hour and following up with training new drivers as soon as a strike was underway, apparently hoping to run enough service that the unions would be forced to accept a bad contract.

None of that should have happened, and it was only possible because the financially healthy district played off of the conservative campaigns against public employee unions of recent years to undermine the public image of their workers and deny them reasonable raises and safety improvements.

The media is also culpable, particularly the editorial writers at the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group, which ran vitriolic and false rants condemning workers and unions, even supporting Republican calls to outlaw strikes by transportation workers.

Only in the funhouse mirror they created was it possible to credibly push the ridiculous claim that unions were striking because they were afraid of using email. It’s not necessary to dehumanize and demean our adversaries. We in the progressive Bay Area are better than that, and maybe now we can act like it.

BART reaches tentative deal with unions, ending the strike

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The BART strike ended this morning — the second four-day strike of the current labor contract impasse, both of which hobbled the  Bay Area’s transportation system — after the district reached a tentative contract with its three unions late last night.

The agreement was spurred by the tragic deaths of two BART employees on Saturday and by yesterday’s National Transportation Safety Board revelation that the train that struck the workers was being used by the district to train drivers, presumably in preparation for offered limited public service during the strike.

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with union leadership that will bring the trains back into service, starting tomorrow, while union members consider the agreement and vote on it,” BART General Manager Grace Crunican said in a public statement issued at 10pm last night, withholding details of the deal. “This is a good package for our union members while still allowing the District to make the necessary investments in our infrastructure. That investment is critical to the future of the Bay Area.”

Union sources tell the Guardian that Saturday’s tragedy definitely created the conditions to reach an agreement, with the district softening its hardline insistence on its “last, best, and final offer” and the unions agreeing to some work rule changes, which they say the district and media had mischaracterized their position on. Technological modernizing will go through, but the unions retained authority over safety and other working conditions. 

For more on the breakdowns that led to the strike, the circumstances surrounding Saturday’s accident, and the aftermath of that tragedy, read tomorrow’s Guardian print edition, which goes on line this evening. 

Train that struck and killed two BART workers was operated by trainee

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National Transportation Safety Board investigator James Southworth confirmed at a press conference on the afternoon of Oct. 21 that the train that struck two BART workers was “in operation for training and maintenance purposes,” and that the operator at the time of the fatal crash was a trainee. He said two of the six people on board were trainees.

The NTSB conducted interviews for 8-10 hours with the train operator, the operator’s supervisor and someone from the dispatch office. 

Asked whether the driver had received safety certification, he said, “the training is part of the certification process.” 

When asked if the driver was previously certified, Southworth said “that is information I don’t have.” It’s unclear if the driver was a new trainee or if his certification had lapsed.  

He said the train was going 60-70 miles per hour at the time, and there was an emergency stop. The train was driven by computer under “Automatic Train Operation” and was not in manual mode.

The district’s decision to run the trains without experienced operators would come against the safety advice of the three striking unions, one of whom — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 — even filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to prevent BART from doing so. The case is pending, the union’s lawyers told the Guardian. 

“The use of uncertified training personnel to provide uncertified managers with a crash course in how to operate BART trains also presents a public safety issue,” the unions wrote in the suit. 

BART workers undergo 15 weeks of safety training every three years, they wrote, training that saves lives. 

For more on the concerns around safety training and certification for track inspection workers, read our interview with BART safety trainer Saul Almanza.

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST BART STRIKE BENEFIT

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We all got a four-day taste of Bay Area life without BART during the labor strike in early July (with another one coming in October, or so it seems at press time) — and it was hardly a transit flavor we savored. But amid all the bitter, there was a sweet worth noting, for anyone who used the opportunity to finally try commuting by San Francisco Bay Ferry. What a way to go! For instance, did you know we actually live on a bay, with water and everything? It’s true! With the ferry, you’re out on that very water, viewing the Bay’s waterfront cities from new vantage points, traveling in comfort, usually right on schedule — with access to an on-board bar serving reasonably priced beer and cocktails, no less. Plus, the ferries travel to Marin County, that land considered so inaccessible for adherents of non-aquatic public transportation. It’s almost enough to avoid the underground for good. Almost.

www.sanfranciscobayferry.com

The Gilded Age of Austerity and the breakdown of civil society

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Is this the week that civil society in the US finally collapses? It’s starting to feel that way. Most of the federal government is already shut down, and on Thursday, it could start defaulting on its debts, possibly dragging down the global economy. And here in the Bay Area, our transportation system will descend into gridlock if strikes shut down BART tomorrow and AC Transit on Thursday, as their unions are threatening.

It may not be the End of the World as We Know It, but this is a striking confluence of events that should cause us all to take stock of the things we take for granted, from reliable public transit systems to a functional federal government to the ability of politics to resolve our differences.

This era could be called the Gilded Age of Austerity, a duality marked by huge and growing concentrations of wealth for the few, but for the rest of us: increasing economic insecurity, a tattered social safety net, crumbling public infrastructure, and few signs of hope that things will get better.

Democracy is a fragile experiment that needs to be regularly reaffirmed by all sides. The US electoral system was already heavily skewed toward the interests of the wealthy, who sponsor both major political parties, to the point where many consider elections to be a sham. But there was still a political system, a basic framework for running the country even during tough times, and that seems to be breaking down.

For the radical right-wingers responsible for hobbling the federal government, this might appear to be a dream come true: Most of the regulators furloughed, funding for most social services stopped, and only the police state remains largely intact (86 percent of Department of Homeland Security employees are on the job and soldiers are still getting paid).

But these anti-government ideologues have never fully understood or appreciated the myriad things that government does to keep civil society functioning over the long term. Our economy relies on federal spending, our health relies on the CDC spotting coming epidemics and the FDA inspecting our food, justice needs a civil court system, our travels depend on roads, and our future depends on today’s young people getting educated (ie Head Start) and fed (ie Food Stamps), and that’s all come to a grinding halt.  

It’s a similar situation with public employee unions, like those that operate BART trains and AC Transit buses. As we’ve reported, private sector wages and benefits often rise or fall with those negotiated by unions. So when unions can’t win good contracts or maintain funded pensions for workers, we’re all dragged down. The Gilded Age gets better for the bosses as the Age of Austerity gets worse for the workers.

BART’s unions had an understandable expectation that they would share in the agency’s recent budget surpluses, particularly after accepting wage and benefit concessions of $100 million over the last four years to help with projected budget deficits that never materialized.

BART managers argue that the district has offered enough and that the rest of the money is needed for its ambitious expansion plans, but there should have been a solution here somewhere short of ultimatums (strike vs. the district’s “last, best offer”). They shouldn’t have needed Gov. Jerry Brown to order the recently ended 60-day cooling off period — the same stall tactic that AC Transit is now asking for — in a world where the basic social contract behind civil society was still intact. When the center still held, before the new Gilded Age fused with the Age of Austerity, people of goodwill could find common ground.

“People’s very livelihoods hang in the balance adding to the additional frustration felt throughout the Bay Area today when both parties failed yesterday to reach an agreement,” Mayor Ed Lee said yesterday in a prepared statement about the BART strike as he cancelled plans to leave on a trade mission to China sponsored by business elites to help carry out their agenda.

Yes, people’s very livelihoods — and their quality of life, and sometimes, their lives — are at stake in these political struggles, those I mentioned and those happening in San Francisco around gentrification and taxation. Anyone who thinks that modern capitalism is sturdy enough to withstand any shock doesn’t have a very good grasp of either economics or history.

Maybe we’ll pull ourselves back from the brink and learn our lessons. Or maybe we’ve entered the endgame, a place where the desperation of those living in the Age of Austerity finally matches the greed and self-interest of those living in the Gilded Age, where one must defeat the other to survive, like two fighting birds plummeting to the ground in a death spiral.

And if that’s the case, are we ready for the next era? Have we sown our seeds and tended our gardens? It took World War Two to really get us out of the Great Depression, and I’d like to think we’ve evolved since then. But this week, I’m not so sure.  

Last tango: Investigators sort through BART’s labor impasse

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Much of BART’s dirty laundry was aired at the first hearing on the negotiations in Oakland today, part of a seven-day investigation called by Gov. Jerry Brown after Sunday night’s talks between unions and management threatened the Bay Area with another strike.

The particulars of each side’s bargaining offers are normally hush-hush, but the hearing was a chance for the public to get a peek into what each side has been asking for. As the three-person panel on the governor’s fact-finding board sat at a long table facing the audience, management and unions sat on separate tables, much like that in a courtroom. 

Amid all the particulars of wages and economics, the unions levied  major allegations over safety concerns, saying that BART management hasn’t incorporated safety changes after the deaths of workers.

Saul Almanza, a BART representative from SEIU Local 1021 and a 17-year railroader, showed the board a set of photos of the places where BART workers had been killed on the job. 

“I’d like to start out with the picture with the part where Robert [Rhodes] was killed,” he said. “The area where Mr. Rhodes was killed was very dark, and remains that way today. Look at the picture to the left, and that’s where Mr. Rhodes was standing as the southbound train proceeded through the interlock. It was dark and loud, and that’s where he was struck as he stood there with no place to go.”

Almanza said that he brought up lighting improvements to his management at many levels, many times. When no improvements were made, that’s when the safety issues became a major point in bargaining, one sticking point that led to the four-day strike in early July. 

Paul Oversier, BART’s general manager of operations, made it a point to hammer home how pained the Bay Area was during the strikes, alleging that “people who depend on BART, who want to fill their prescriptions” may have been delayed, among others. 

He also touted some drastic numbers, saying the direct cost of the BART strike to the Bay Area was estimated at about $73 million per a weekday. 

“That doesn’t include empty tables at Bay Area restaurants, higher day care payments for working parents, or the  overall increase in personal stress throughout the region,” Oversier said. “None of these are counted in the economic model used for the BART strike.” 

But the union said that management did everything short of inviting them to strike, repeatedly used stalling tactics, making counter-offers that had changes of “point five percent” from their previous offers, and avoiding bargaining for as long as 33 hours at a time. 

Vincent Harrington has represented BART unions in contract negotiations since 1978, but he said this negotiation has had more hardball tactics than he’s seen in any negotiation. “This time around, we couldn’t even reach an agreement on ground rules,” he told the board. 

He also said that management used the media as a way to spread inaccurate information. He wanted to use the hearing as a chance to air the “facts versus myths.”

One commonly misreported figure is that BART workers pay only $92 per month into their healthcare, he said. “That doesn’t tell the full story. These workers contributed 1.627 percent of their wages into a fund to cover not only the ongoing health care of active employees, but also the retirees. There are 3,000 employees in the plans,” he said.

That brings the total to about $180 per person, he said, with a caveat. Some time ago, employer-provided healthcare was capped. “Additional costs beyond that cap would be on the workers and their families, not on BART,” he said.

Harrington also brought up a point of contention in negotiations that is familiar to regular BART riders: how bathrooms in the station are routinely locked and unavailable for use.
“We want BART to reopen bathrooms for patrons. We are not aware of a single transit station today that keeps the bathrooms locked. What does that mean for workers and our patrons? Where do they go? That means they relieve themselves in the stations,” he said. The bathrooms were locked since the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks at nearly every station. “We asked them to open them up. BART has said no.”

Management and the unions both presented their idealized BART systems, with management reiterating their need to invest in new trains and to control pension costs, and unions saying their workers deserve a living wage.

This will be the only public hearing day, and afterward the panel of Jacob Applesmith, Micki Callahan, and Robert L. Balgenort will put together a draft report for Brown, which is due Sunday. 

This could lead to a 60-day cooling off period where no strikes could take place, or Monday morning we could find ourselves with no BART trains and negotiations again at a standstill.

BART union negotiators said that they were willing to talk, and that they could even hammer out a deal with management by Sunday — if management is willing to bargain in good faith.

“It’s like a textbook on how to bargain but not actually be bargaining,” Harrington said. “It’s like a tango: you can’t do it by yourself very effectively.”

Any member of the public that wishes to send a comment about the BART negotiations may do so to communications@dir.ca.gov until 9am tomorrow [Thu/8]. The board said its report, once sent to the governor, would also be made public and likely available on the governor’s website.

 

 

 

Last train

steve@sfbg.com

Last week’s four-day strike by Bay Area Rapid Transit workers dominated the news and made headlines around the country, marking the latest battleground in a national war between public employee unions and the austerity agenda pushed by conservatives and neoliberals.

Of course, that wasn’t how the conflict was framed by BART, most journalists, or even the two BART unions involved, all of whom dutifully reported the details of each sides’ offers and counter-offers, the competing “safety” narratives (new security procedures demands by unions versus spending more on capital improvements than raises), and the strike’s impact on commuters and the local economy.

But once this long-simmering labor standoff seized the attention of a public heavily reliant on BART, fueling the popular anger and resentment increasingly directed at public employee unions in recent years, familiar basic storylines emerged.

At that point, the Bay Area could have been placed in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, or Illinois — the most recent high-profile labor union battlegrounds, with their narratives of greedy public employees clinging to their fully funded pensions and higher than average salaries while the rest of us suffer through this stubbornly lingering hangover from the Great Recession.

Around water coolers and online message boards, there were common refrains: How dare those unions demand the raises that the rest of us are being denied! Pensions? Who has fully funded pensions anymore? Why can’t they just be more realistic?

When Bay Area residents were finally forced to find other ways of getting around, within a transportation system that is already at the breaking point during peak hours thanks to years of austerity budgets and under-investment in basic infrastructure, those seething resentments exploded into outright anger.

And those political dynamics could only get worse in a month. The BART strike could resume full strength on a non-holiday workweek if the two sides aren’t able to come to an agreement before the recently extended contract expires.

This is the Bay Area’s most visible and impactful labor standoff, and it could prove to be a pivotal one for the modern American labor movement.

 

BART AS BELLWETHER

Chris Daly was a clarion voice for progressive values while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2000-2010. Now, as political director of Service Employee International Union Local 1021, one of the BART unions, he says this standoff is about more than just the issues being discussed at the bargaining table.

“The terms and conditions of workers in the public sector is a buoy for other workers,” Daly told us, explaining how everyone’s wages and benefits tend to follow the gains and setbacks negotiated by unions. “The right understands this, which is why the right has been mercilessly attacking public sector workers.”

Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, confirmed that union contracts affect the overall labor market. “When unions improve wages and benefits, it does have a ripple effect,” Jacobs said. He agreed that the outcome at BART could be a bellwether for the question, “As the economy comes back, how much will workers share in that prosperity?”

Demonizing public sector workers as greedy or lazy also serves to undercut the entire labor movement, Daly said, considering that public employees make up a far higher percentage of union members than their private sector counterparts. And during election time, it is union money and ground troops that typically contest wealthy individuals and corporations’ efforts to maintain or expand power.

“Labor is one of the main checks on unbridled corporate power, and public sector unions are the backbone of labor,” Daly told us.

So in that context, BART’s battle is about more than just the wages and benefits of train drivers and station agents, with their average base salary of $62,000, just barely above the area median income, and their demand for raises after accepting wage freezes in recent years.

Daly sees this as part of a much broader political standoff, and he said there are indications that BART management also sees it that way, starting with the $399,000 the transit agency is paying its lead negotiator Thomas Hock, a veteran of union-busting standoffs around the country.

“He has a history of bargaining toward strikes, with the goal of breaking unions,” Daly said, noting that Hock’s opening offer would have taken money from BART employees, with new pension and healthcare contributions outweighing raises. “It was a takeaway proposal when you add it up, while they have a $100 million surplus in their budget and the cost of living in the Bay Area is shooting up.”

But BART spokesperson Rick Rice told us that Hock is simply trying to get the best deal possible for this taxpayer-funded agency, and he denied there is any intention to break the union or connection to some larger anti-worker agenda.

“There is definitely a need to start funding the capital needs of the district,” Rice told us. “I don’t see that we’re pushing an austerity agenda as much as a realistic agenda.”

 

AUSTERITY AND EXPANSION

But Daly said the very idea that austerity measures are “realistic” excuses the banks and other powerful players whose reckless pursuit of profits caused the financial meltdown of 2008. The underlying expectation is that workers should continue to pay for that debacle, rather than bouncing back with the rebounding economy.

“They get in this austerity mindset, and we see it in every contract we’re negotiating,” Daly said, noting that capital needs and benefits have always needed funding, despite their elevation now as immediate imperatives. “You have good people with good intentions like [BART Board President] Tom Radulovich pushing this austerity mindset.”

Radulovich, a longtime progressive activist, told us he agrees with some of how Daly is framing the standoff, but not all of it. He said that BART is being squeezed into its position by unique factors.

Radulovich said that healthcare and pension costs really are rising faster then ever, creating a challenge in maintaining those benefit levels. And he said that Hock isn’t simply carrying out some larger anti-union agenda. “He’s negotiating what the district wants him to negotiate,” he said.

Radulovich said that while BART’s workers may deserve raises, most of BART’s revenues come from fares. “So it’s taking from workers to give to other workers,” Radulovich said. “It’s a little more complicated because it is a public agency and Chris is aware of that.”

Yet Radulovich acknowledged that BART has opted to pursue an aggressive expansion policy that is diverting both capital and operating expenditures into new lines — such as the East Contra Costa, Oakland Airport, and Warm Springs extensions now underway — rather than setting some of that money aside for workers.

“And for a lot of those, we were being cheered on by the [San Francisco] Labor Council, one of many ironies,” said Radulovich, who favors infill projects over new extensions. “These are some of the conversations I’ve had with labor leaders in the last few weeks, how we think strategically about these things.”

But if BART wanted to defeat the union, it may have miscalculated the level of worker discontent with austerity measures.

“What they didn’t plan on is some high-level Bay Area political pressure,” Daly said, referring to the local uproar over the strike that led Gov. Jerry Brown to send in the state’s two top mediators, who made progress and created a one month cooling off period before the strike can resume.

 

RETIREMENT SECURITY

One of the hardest issues to overcome in the court of public opinion may be the fully funded pensions of BART employees. “Times are changing, costs are escalating rapidly, and we’re asking for a modest contribution,” Rice said of BART’s demand that employees help fund their pensions.

Daly acknowledges the resentments about the pension issue, even though it was essentially a trap set for public employee unions back in the 1980s, when BART and other public agencies were the ones offering to pay for employee pensions in lieu of raises.

But rather than resenting public employees for having pensions, he said the public should be asking why most workers don’t have retirement security and how to fix that problem.

“At what point do we organize and demand retirement security for all workers?” Daly said, noting that SEIU is now leading that fight on behalf of all workers, not just its members. “What we ought to be talking about is how we restore the social contract.”

Jacobs confirmed that SEIU has indeed been pushing the retirement security issue at the state and federal levels. And it’s a crucial issue, he said, noting that just 45 percent of workers have pensions and that the average retirement savings is just $12,000.

“The retirement problem we have is not the pension crisis, it is the lack of pensions crisis,” Jacobs said.

That’s one reason that he said this standoff has implications that extend far beyond the Bay Area.

“The fight goes beyond these particular workers,” Jacobs said. “It’s an important set of negotiations and an important strike in terms of looking at what happens in this country as the economy improves.”

Daly agrees there’s a lot at stake, for more than just his members.

“Losing on this means we’d be hard pressed to win elsewhere, anytime,” Daly said. “It is important symbolically, and it is important to the strength and morale of the movement.”

 

Celebrating independence, embracing wage slavery

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On the eve of Independence Day, too many San Franciscans seem eager to give up on the very idea of independence, instead willingly buying into the divide and conquer strategies of those who seek to control and exploit us. Just consider the big news of the day.

On Day Three of the BART strike, mainstream and social media are once again awash with angry anti-union diatribes by people who are resentful of the fact that some workers in this society still manage to earn the pensions and decent salaries that most of us wage slaves are being denied.

Pensions are the one thing that allows the working class some degree of independence during its twilight years. And the average BART salary of $72,000 annually shouldn’t be considered excessive in an expensive city that will chew up at least a third of that in housing costs.

But they are each more than most of us are getting, so it’s easy to turn many people against their fellow workers, even though the real targets of our ire should be the bosses and economic system that are denying us our independence and the means to pursue our happiness.

It’s a similar story with the breaking news of the day: City College of San Francisco losing its accreditation and being turned over to state control. While there are some reasons to criticize how this important institution has been managed over the years, it was still being managed by locally elected trustees who made the best decisions they could under bad circumstances.

They made decisions to maintain a broad-based curriculum that this community wanted and needed, and to avoid exploiting the faculty like so many other educational institutions are doing, in the process taking a gamble with lower reserves than may be needed. And the voters of San Francisco stepped up to support CCSF with a parcel tax that was helping to ease it away from the brink, acting as a proud and independent community does during troubled times.

But a commission of unelected bureaucrats on a ideological mission to transform educational institutions into something less than the broad-based community resources that CCSF has strived to be decided to make an example of San Francisco. And they did so with the full support of Mayor Ed Lee, who issued a statement today criticizing local officials for not embracing even harsher austerity measures than they did, and saying “I fully support” the state takeover.

Lee’s hand-picked panel recommending reforms of the Housing Authority is also proposing to sacrifice the independence of poor San Franciscans in favor of ever-more subsidies to real estate developers, according to a story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Among the “reforms” is a proposal to divert federal money from the Section 8 program that offers rent-subsidies to the poor, as Chron reporter John Cote described like this: “A terribly run program that provides low-income residents with vouchers for private housing would be administered by the city, rather than the federally funded public housing agency. The vouchers would be prioritized for certain affordable housing projects, creating dedicated revenue to help secure loans to build them.”

So the vouchers that allow low-income people some independence — rather than living in squalid, chronically mismanaged public housing projects in San Francisco — will instead subsidize development projects. Yes, we do need to subsidize affordable housing development, which this city is underfunding, but we shouldn’t be taking the meager resources of society’s least fortunate families to do so.  

I have no doubts that Lee will jump at this suggestion (although its unlikely to be so eagerly embraced by federal regulators at HUD) given his penchant for shady real estate schemes that line the pockets of the powerful, like the one that the Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered this week.

CIR reported that the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Center — a for-profit company connected to Willie Brown that is arranging immigration visas for Chinese nationals who invest in Lennar’s Hunters Point housing development — is getting key help from Lee and members of his staff.

This project was already looking like a bait-and-switch scam, as we also reported this week, with Lennar being guaranteed profits without even putting up its own money, thanks to Lee’s willingness to use the power of his office to solicit funds on behalf of the country’s biggest residential developer.

If Lennar wasn’t going to build the affordable housing we need on the front end, or put up the money itself, why didn’t the city just administer this project and give the work to local contractors? What exactly is this Florida-based corporation doing in exchange for being handed some of the most valuable real estate in the city, except for helping its powerful local friends who pulled strings on its behalf?

What’s motivating Lee these days? Well, considering that Brown and other power brokers placed him in the Mayor’s Office after a career at City Hall doing their bidding — a role he seems to be still playing today in his powerful new role — I’d say it was a lack of independence.

It’s all pretty depressing, but at least we have a holiday tomorrow to celebrate our independence. Happy Fourth of July, comrades.