Jerry Brown

The Gilded Age of Austerity and the breakdown of civil society

Sasha Cuttler
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121
The Gilded Age of Austerity and the breakdown of civil society

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.  

BART negotiations continue as unions withhold strike threat UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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105
BART negotiations continue as unions withhold strike threat UPDATED

With the 60-day cooling off period ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown coming to an end on Thursday, raising the specter of another Bay Area Rapid Transit shutdown, BART’s two main unions announced yesterday that they were holding off on calling a strike for now. [UPDATE 10/11: BART unions today issued a 72-hour strike notice, meaning they could strike on Monday].

“We’ve listened to the public and we share their concern about a disruption in service at the end of the cooling-off period.  We do not want to strike. That is why we’re not giving a 72-hour notice at this time, because we want to leave every opportunity open to try to get this deal done. Of course we are keeping all options on the table,” Service Employee International Union Local 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 said in a joint statement.

Some media reports indicate that there has finally been some progress in the long-stalled negotiations, with a framework on pensions being agreed to, although the two sides still seem far apart on wages, benefits, and the length of the contract.

The unions cast it this way: “To this point of doing everything possible to avoid a strike: over the past 10 days, the unions have moved publicly three times, to BART’s zero times. If this were a score in the baseball playoffs – we, the Oakland A’s would be three and they, the Detroit Tigers would be zero. 

“At this point, if there is a disruption in service at the end of the cooling-off period, it will be for one reason and for one reason alone: our elected BART leadership has not shown leadership.”

BART Board President Tom Radulovich disputed that the concessions have been one-sided, but he said that, “They continue to want to negotiate in the media and we’re not really down with that.”

Asked to characterized where things stand and the prospects for resolving the impasse without another strike, Radulovich said, “We’re still cranking away and trying to get it done…It’s really not up to us whether there’s a strike or not. We just have to get this done.”

Meanwhile, while conservatives clamor to use the situation to get the Democrat-controlled Legislature to ban unions from striking (good luck with that one), Sup. John Avalos held a hearing yesterday at City Hall to examine some of the larger issues at play in the impasse, such as retirement security, that the Guardian covered in our July 9 issue.

Asked how the hearing went, Avalos told the Guardian, “We talked a lot about how BART has been villifying workers in the court of public opinion in an effort to weaken workers’ bargaining power.”

 

Industrial hemp legalized in California

Michael Redmond
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0
Industrial hemp legalized in California

After being stuck in legislative limbo for 14 years, industrial hemp will soon be a legally sanctioned agricultural crop in the state of California.

The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act (SB 566) was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 25, ending years of deliberation dating back to 1999, a process that included multiple gubernatorial vetoes. The freshly signed law will allow approved California residents to grow hemp for industrial purposes by reclassifying the once-felonious plant as a “fiber or oilseed crop.”

SB 566, a bill championed since 2005 by Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF), defines industrial hemp as the “nonpsychoactive types of the plant Cannabis saliva L. and the seed produced therefrom, having no more than 3/10 of 1 percent of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) contained in the dried flowering tops.”

In simpler terms: It doesn’t protect marijuana, but rather marijuana’s less mind-bending cousin, which is far more useful as a raw industrial material.

“We are very pleased to have the signature,” Sen. Leno told the Guardian. “It’s been a 10-year effort to get here. It’s a job still, but [the passing of SB 566] will help sustain family farms in California for the future and likely create more job opportunities. Hemp is a $500 million a year industry in California, and it’s growing at 10 percent annually.”

California now follows in the footsteps of nine other states and 30 other countries that have reclassified the innocuous plant as a crop with agricultural and commercial value. And it is quite valuable.

“This is a miracle plant that has served the planet Earth well for, literally, millennia, and that we currently legally manufacture and sell thousands of hemp products including food, clothing, shelter, paper, fuel, all biodegradable products,” said Leno. “It’s renewable every 90 days, grows without herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, and needs less water than corn. It is the definition of sustainability.”

But the reputation of hemp hasn’t always had champions like Leno. Since the initial proposal of Assembly House Resolution 32 back in 1999, the legislation has been vetoed four times by three different governors. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cited a “false sense of security” he feared would be cultivated among the growers of the crop, due to its illegality at a federal level.

Gov. Brown had previously shot down the proposed legislation in 2011, citing a gap in state and federal law as the reason. However, he did remark in his veto message at the time that “it is absurd that hemp is being imported into the state, but our farmers cannot grow it.”

And it would seem that Brown’s recognition of hemp’s merits finally outweighed his concern over the potential for California growers to face federal prosecution, which is a major relief for the architects of SB 566. Now Californians can stop relying on imported hemp from Mexico and Canada (among other places) and start legally manufacturing their own.

“We currently manufacture literally thousands of [hemp] products — legally — and sell them,” said Leno. “This is why this issue has been so nonsensical.”

The “nonsensical” issue has had deep roots, given hemp’s historically ambiguous federal standing. As Brown’s 2011 veto message noted, “federal law clearly establishes that all cannabis plants, including industrial hemp, are marijuana, which is a federally regulated controlled substance.”

But that isn’t a universally held assertion. Back in 1970, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 “explicitly excludes nonpsychoactive hemp from the definition of marijuana,” a decision that the federal government never appealed. It’s a decision that Leno agrees with.

“We’ve always believed that there is no federal preemption, because we believe that that court case ruled that Congress had knowingly exempted industrial hemp from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 –because it’s not a drug,” said Leno.

Now the state of California can do what more than 30 countries (including Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, and China) and nine states are already doing: cultivating and processing a plant that many have touted as the “miracle plant.”

Now that SB 566 has passed, however, the looming question still remains as to how the federal government will respond. But Leno is confident that it will respect the will of California lawmakers.

“I have great confidence in a recent statement by Attorney General Eric Holder,” said Leno. “He’s said that if a state puts into place a legal allowance and regulatory scheme, that the federal government would not interfere with marijuana. Now, we need clarification between hemp and marijuana, but there’s no sensical way that that could be interpreted that hemp is excluded, given that hemp’s not a drug.”

Either way, hemp is on the horizon here in California.

Community not criminalization

Michael Redmond
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8

 

By María Poblet

OPINION San Francisco is poised to break ground in defense of immigrants, an important step towards turning the tide against the criminalization of communities of color.

In a unanimous vote on September 24, the Board of Supervisors supported a due process ordinance that, after final approval, will reduce deportations by setting strict limits on collaboration between federal immigration enforcement and local authorities. Our city will make history by refusing to implement the federal Secure Communities program, which allows US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to request an immigration hold detention without cause, regardless of immigration status, at local expense.

This victory didn’t trickle down like fog from the “progressive Bay Area bubble.” It was hard fought, from the bottom up. Immigrant and undocumented people most impacted by the problems led the fight, and they built a movement too strong to ignore. Causa Justa::Just Cause helped organize the groundswell, as part of the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee, a broad grassroots collaboration. We had support from progressive champions John Avalos, Eric Mar, David Campos, and five additional co-sponsors on the board.

This movement builds on the fights in the 1980s to make San Francisco a Sanctuary City, welcoming survivors of the wars in Central America. We build on the fights in the ’90s to re-commit to those values in the face of a new wave of migration, when economic refugees arrived, fleeing the hunger caused by US-imposed Free Trade Agreements. We build on the very personal fights of everyday people, like a woman we’ll call Silvia, a domestic violence survivor who met with the District Attorney repeatedly, demanded that he lead those meetings in Spanish so she could participate fully, advocated for herself and her community, and ultimately won his commitment of support for this ordinance. This victory belongs to the hundreds of community leaders who, like Silvia, overcame intimidation, organized their families and neighbors, and showed our elected officials the way forward.

In a national context, where states like Georgia, Alabama and Arizona hunt down immigrants, we in California, a majority immigrant, majority people of color state, have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to follow Silvia’s leadership. It’s time to reject criminalization, and build community.

Every time there’s a new way to label someone a “criminal,” more families and communities are torn apart. Millions of black and Latino people are behind bars already, thanks to criminalization policies like the war on drugs, structural unemployment, decades of divestment from working class communities, and racial discrimination. Creating new immigration violations only makes that problem worse, trapping whole new sectors of our society in the prison dragnet. This advance in San Francisco should inspire our state as a whole not only to reject S-Comm, but also to take bold action to address the profoundly problematic prison system, and challenge the racism and poverty it depends on.

But, for our state to stand up like that is going to take a serious transformation. Gov. Jerry Brown recently announced plans to expand the prison system with revenues from Prop. 30 — the grassroots progressive tax passed last year to support public schools and social services. Causa Justa::Just Cause, as part of California Calls, through SF Rising and Oakland Rising, was one of hundreds of community groups that helped pass this progressive tax. We are outraged to see the governor literally betting on the criminalization of the next generation, with money that was supposed to support their success.

Policies like S-Comm manufacture the need for more detention facilities, ultimately benefitting corporate interests like the GEO private prison group. Its lucrative business depends on criminalization, and a culture of fear. If politicians aren’t brave enough to survive the accusation that they are “soft on crime” in order to champion real change, then we the people will have to take it into our own hands. Immigrant communities, black communities, communities of color, and poor communities need to keep building the solidarity and the movement that will allow us to win, from San Francisco to Sacramento to DC. There is much more to be done, and we can only do it together.  

María Poblet is executive director of Causa Justa::Just Cause.

Industrial hemp legalized in California

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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132

After being stuck in legislative limbo for 14 years, industrial hemp will soon be a legally sanctioned agricultural crop in the state of California.

The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act (SB 566) was signed into law on Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown, after years of deliberation dating back to 1999, a process that included multiple gubernatorial vetoes. The freshly signed law will allow approved California residents to grow hemp for industrial purposes by reclassifying the once-felonious plant as a “fiber or oilseed crop.”

SB 566, a bill championed since 2005 by Sen. Mark Leno (D), defines industrial hemp as the “nonpsychoactive types of the plant Cannabis saliva L. and the seed produced therefrom, having no more than 3/10 of 1 percent of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) contained in the dried flowering tops.” 

In simpler terms: It doesn’t protect marijuana, but rather marijuana’s less mind-bending cousin, which is far more useful as a raw industrial material.

“We are very pleased to have the signature,” Sen. Leno told the Guardian. “It’s been a 10-year effort to get here. It’s a job still, but [the passing of SB 566] will help sustain family farms in California for the future and likely create more job opportunities. Hemp is a $500 million a year industry in California, and it’s growing at 10 percent annually.”

California now follows in the footsteps of nine other states and 30 other countries that have reclassified the innocuous plant as a crop with agricultural and commercial value. And it is quite valuable.

“This is a miracle plant that has served the planet earth well for, literally, millennia, and that we currently legally manufacture and sell thousands of hemp products including food, clothing, shelter, paper, fuel, all biodegradable products,” said Leno. “It’s renewable every 90 days, grows without herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, and needs less water than corn. It is the definition of sustainability.”

But the reputation of hemp hasn’t always had champions like Sen. Leno. Since the initial proposal of HR 32 back in 1999, the bill has been vetoed four times by three different governors. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cited a “false sense of security” he feared would be cultivated amongst the growers of the crop, due to its illegality at a federal level.

Gov. Brown had previously shot down the proposed legislation in 2011, citing a gap in state and federal law as the reason. However, he did remark in his veto message at the time that “it is absurd that hemp is being imported into the state, but our farmers cannot grow it.”

And it would seem that Brown’s recognition of hemp’s merits finally outweighed his concern over the potential for California growers to face federal prosecution, which is a major relief for the architects of SB 566. Now Californians can stop relying on imported hemp from Mexico and Canada (among other places) and start legally manufacturing their own.

“We currently manufacture literally thousands of [hemp] products — legally — and sell them,” said Leno. “This is why this issue has been so nonsensical.”

The “nonsensical” issue has had deep roots, given hemp’s historically ambiguous federal standing. As Brown’s 2011 veto message noted, “federal law clearly establishes that all cannabis plants, including industrial hemp, are marijuana, which is a federally regulated controlled substance.”

But that isn’t a universally held assertion. Back in 1970, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 “explicitly excludes nonpsychoactive hemp from the definition of marijuana,” a decision that the federal government never appealed. It’s a decision that Sen. Leno agrees with.

“We’ve always believed that there is no federal preemption, because we believe that that court case ruled that Congress had knowingly exempted industrial hemp from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 –because it’s not a drug,” said Leno.

Now the state of California can do what more than 30 countries (including Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and China) and nine states are already doing: Cultivating and processing a plant that many have touted as the “miracle plant.”

Now that SB 566 has passed, however, the looming question still remains as to how the federal government will respond. But Leno is confident that it will respect the will of California lawmakers.  

“I have great confidence in a recent statement by Attorney General Eric Holder,” said Leno. “He’s said that if a state puts into place a legal allowance and regulatory scheme, that the federal government would not interfere with marijuana. Now, we need clarification between hemp and marijuana, but there’s no sensical way that that could be interpreted that hemp is excluded, given that hemp’s not a drug.”

Either way, hemp is on the horizon here in California.

Brown signs bike buffer law as SF wrestles with cyclist-motorist relations

Sasha Cuttler
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18

It took three tries, but cycling advocates and California legislators were finally able to get Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature yesterday on a new law requiring motorists to give at least three feet of clearance when passing bicyclists.

We criticized Brown for vetoing a similar bill in 2011 when he raised concerns about slowing automobile traffic, and then he frustrated supporters of the bill last year when his veto-prompting issue was how the new bill encouraged motorists to cross a double-yellow line to pass cyclists when it was safe to do so.

This time, the compromise that won Brown over was a requirement that drivers slow down to a “reasonable and prudent” speed if they aren’t able to given cyclists a full three feet because of road conditions. That’s not ideal, but at least it’s finally becoming illegal for cars to zip closely past cyclists, a dangerous, unnerving, and unfortunately too common practice.

San Francisco has become an intriguing testing ground for cyclist-motorist relations as the number of people choosing to pedal to work, play, or on errands has exploded, based on both official stats and by simply observing Market Street at commute time, which is like a mini Critical Mass everyday, or the overflowing bike parking areas in downtown buildings.

The city is also now wrestling with anti-cyclists biases in law enforcement and among some political figures, which will be the subject of City Hall hearings next month. Certainly, there is bad behavior on the roads by both cyclists and motorists, and often times poor understanding by both about the rules of the road, particularly on those dangerous “right hook” turns when motorists cross a bike lane (motorists should signal, then pull all the way to the right when it’s their turn, and cyclists should pass on their left, taking the lane if necessary), which have resulted in at least two cyclist fatalities in SF this year.

This new law provides some much needed clarity and public awareness to an important public safety issue — and it should be just the beginning of creating new laws and public education campaigns to help promote safe cycling and raise driver awareness of the need to slow down, pay attention, and share the roads. 

UPDATE: Dave Snyder, executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, which worked on the new law, told us he expects more benefit from publicizing the new law than from police enforcing it.

“The main benefit is educational, just getting people who drive to give people on bikes plenty of space. I don’t expect much enforcement,” he told us. “There’s a heckuva lot more that we need to do to make California bicyclists safer.”

The main need he cited is more money for bike lanes, particularly those separated from automobile traffic: We ned funding to build bike networks so we dno’t need to worry about being passed at high speed.”

Bill on Brown’s desk to make two-tiered system of college tuition: for the rich, and the poor

Erica Hanna
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66
Bill on Brown’s desk to make two-tiered system of college tuition: for the rich, and the poor

It seems that one California politician is adapting an old adage for a modern era: If at first students protest and get pepper sprayed, try, try that legislation again. 

AB 955 is a bill that would create a pilot program to raise community college tuition, allowing six allegedly overcrowded community colleges to charge the full cost of their classes during summer and winter sessions. A three-unit class would jump in cost from $138 to roughly $600, depending on the college involved. Authored by Assemblyman Das Williams (D- Santa Barbara), the bill now sits on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk awaiting his signature. 

The colleges in the pilot are College of the Canyons, Crafton Hills College, Long Beach City College, Oxnard College, Pasadena City College and Solano Community College.

Local community college advocates said the pilot program could crack open the door to a future where two-tiered access to community college is the norm: The rich will be able to get classes, and the poor will be crowded out. 

Those fears are prompting local San Francisco activists to join in the fray.

“AB 955 creates a system of haves and have nots,” said Shanell Williams, the student trustee of City College of San Francisco (no relation to Assemblyperson Williams). “Students that cannot afford to pay more will essentially be denied access,” she said.

Williams is a staunch advocate for education equality at City College, and led many of the rallies decrying the school’s loss of accreditation. She now plans to lead a rally against the bill here in San Francisco. But she’s not the only one who thinks this is a bad idea.

Santa Monica College tried to make a similar two-tiered system for tuition last year, offering classes that were previously closed due to lack of state funding by sticking the whole price of the class on students. Santa Monica College students were far from pleased.

Protests erupted, students were pepper sprayed, the incident became national news, and the idea was criticized across the board as class warfare. 

The students’ outrage doesn’t just stem from raised tuition, but from a broken promise. 

The idea of “open access” to classes is mandated by California’s educational master plan, which states that all students over the age of 18 should have access to community colleges and that tuition would be free. Part of the Donahoe Education Act of 1960, it was signed into law that year by Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown.

The Master Plan has eroded slowly since the 90s, and the once tuition-free UC and CSU systems now charge their students fees in excess of $3,000 a semester for full time enrollment — inflated prices which so far the community college system has resisted. Classes cost $46 per-unit at each of the 112 community colleges in California.

Assemblyman Williams  justified his bill in an op-ed for The Daily Californian, saying the idea of open access has failed as the California community college system has already shut over 500,000 students from its doors, according to data from the state community college chancellor’s office.

“Yes, $600 is more expensive than $138, but only in the short term,” Williams wrote. “What’s the cost to a student forced by the current lack of classes to have to face one to four more years of living expenses to complete his or her education? It’s a lot more than $600.”

But Jessica Jones, two-year student body president of Santa Rosa Junior College, fears that the pilot program may just be the beginning.

“Who’s to say it won’t go like wildfire across the state?” she said in comments to the Guardian. Unlike the UC and CSU students, she fears the community college students she sees everyday would have more to lose when the fees are hiked.  More often, she said, those students are “working many jobs, many have families, you’ll see less and less students able to take courses.”

It isn’t just activists who fear this will go statewide. The state chancellor of all 112 California Community Colleges, Brice Harris, has also publicly denounced the bill.

“The next time the budget goes in the tank they’ll tell (us), we can’t give it to you, tell your colleges to raise fees,” he said at a recent state meeting. “All of us who believe this is bad public policy for California are going to have to speak out forcefully with the (Brown) administration to make them understand what a huge policy change this is for the state of California,” he said. 

Jessica Jones works with the Student Senate of California Community Colleges, and though their opinion is not uniform, many student leaders statewide are organizing actions against the fee hike pilot program. Crafton Hills College, Modesto Junior College, Pasadena City College, Long Beach City College, Santa Rosa Junior College and De Anza College will all have demonstrations or engage in write-in campaigns by the end of next week.

Williams, the City College Student Trustee is organizing a demonstration in San Francisco as well. The protest will be at Powell Street BART station on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 6pm. 

Domestic workers may get labor rights

Michael Redmond
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3

The California Legislature gave final approval to the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights on Sept. 12, legislation sponsored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) to finally extend some labor rights to this largely female and immigrant workforce. Advocates are hopeful that Gov. Jerry Brown will sign it this time.

As we reported in a Guardian cover story, “Do we care?” (March 28), domestic and farm workers are the only two categories of employees exempted from federal labor law, and the caregiving professions are consistently undervalued in our economic and political systems. Last year, Brown vetoed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, expressing the concern that it might hurt the economy and cost jobs.

But advocates for the measure came back even stronger this year than last, and they recently accepted a set of amendments in the Senate that weaken the bill but may make it more palatable to Gov. Brown, including eliminating the requirement for rest and meal breaks and giving the measure a three-year sunset and commission to review its impacts.

“We’ve had discussions with the administration and we think we’re on the right track to get it signed,” Ammiano’s Press Secretary Carlos Alcala told the Guardian.

He emphasized that the bill still retains the requirement that domestic workers, who routinely work more than 40 hours per week, are entitled to overtime pay, something that Ammiano also emphasized in a prepared statement.

“This is a historic moment,” Ammiano said. “This now goes to the governor for his signature. That will give these workers, mostly women, the right to be paid fairly for overtime worked.”

Katie Joaquin, campaign coordinator the California Domestic Workers Coalition, said she’s excited to see the bill pass and hopeful that Brown will sign it this time.

“If he signs this bill, California would be the first state to give daily overtime rights to all domestic workers,” she said.

Gov. Brown has until Oct. 13 to sign it. 

Bay Bridge turns Brown

Michael Redmond
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15

The California Senate gave its blessing to the rename the western span of the Bay Bridge after former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown on Sept. 12, blatantly disregarding its own rules and strong local opposition to the proposal.

Since ACR 65 is a nonbinding resolution, Gov. Jerry Brown cannot veto it even though he went on record earlier this week saying the 77-year-old bridge should keep the same name it’s always had.

San Francisco Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee both voted in favor of the resolution.

As the Senate gave final approval to the measure, attorneys G. Whitney Leigh and Lee Hepner filed a complaint seeking injunctive relief to overturn the resolution on behalf of their client, good government advocate Bob Planthold.

At a press conference, Planthold said the lawsuit “has nothing to do with Willie,” but rather sought to remedy what he perceived as state lawmakers ignoring their own rules, including reserving such honors for the deceased, a state of affairs he characterized as “Orwellian.”

Leigh questioned why Sacramento legislators were in such a rush to rename part of the Bay Bridge when construction of the eastern span had only just been completed, following long delays and overruns partly caused by Brown when he was mayor.

“There is a shadiness and irregularity to this procedure,” Leigh said.

The suit alleges “arbitrary suspension and/or violation of legislative rules and policies” to fast track the legislation. Specifically, Hepner said, lawmakers ignored an established timeline for introducing new proposals, instead allowing ACR 65 to be submitted four months after the formal deadline.

Formal Assembly criteria states that clear community consensus must be in place when a major piece of public infrastructure is renamed. Yet in the case of the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge, no such consensus exists.

Leigh is the former law partner of Matt Gonzalez, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who joined former board presidents Quentin Kopp and Aaron Peskin to formally call on Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg to stop the resolution from going forward.

On Aug. 29, the trio fired off an open letter to Steinberg in an attempt to halt the proposal from going any further, claiming “there exists significant concern in our community that naming the Bay Bridge for him is not appropriate.”

Peskin had a more colorful take on Brown and bridge when he spoke to the Guardian: “I think they should name the old eastern span, that they’re demolishing, after him. You know why? Because it’s old and crooked and a danger to society.”

How far will $10 an hour stretch in 2016?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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112

Earlier this week, just as media reports pointed out that America’s wealthiest 1 percent did better in 2012 than almost any other year in history, Gov. Jerry Brown came out in favor of a bill that would raise the state minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016.

Last night, the Assembly approved the bill on a 51-25 vote, sending it onto the governor’s office. The development is almost certain to provoke howls from pro-business interests claiming it will wreak havoc on the economy. But what will it mean for minimum wage earners, whose take-home pay currently totals less than $300 a week for a full-time job?

Here are some statistics to put into perspective what it means to be a minimum wage earner in a world of rising costs and a widening gulf between top income earners and the rest.

  • The National Low Income Housing Coalition notes that a household must earn $25.78 per hour to afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment without spending 30 percent of their income. Couples earning California’s current $8 minimum wage can muster only a combined $16 an hour before taxes.
  • Based on this map illustrating San Francisco’s gaping rent affordability gap, a minimum-wage earner (making the 2012 minimum wage of $10.24 an hour) would have to hold down at least 3.4 full-time jobs to rent a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rate – even in the city’s less expensive areas like the Bayview or the Excelsior.
  • Fast food workers around the country are aiming higher than the $10 per hour Californians may have to look forward to by 2016 – organized food service employees have been rallying to be paid $15 an hour, a rate they see as an actual livable wage. According to this nifty calculator created by the Daily Beast, using data from University of Massachusetts economists Jeanette Wicks-Lim and Robert Pollin, the cost of paying McDonald’s workers this much could be recovered by charging 22 cents more for a Big Mac.
  • Finally, it’s worth considering the growing wealth gap between the wealthiest one percent and the rest. From 2007 to 2009, average real income for the bottom 99 percent fell by 11.6 percent, the largest two-year decline since the Great Depression, according to to an analysis by UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent lost an even higher percentage in that time. But then, during the economic recovery from 2009 to 2011, the one percent saw their incomes increase by 11.2 percent, while incomes of the bottom 99 percent shrunk slightly. Then, in 2012, the top one percent scored a 19 percent increase, their collective earnings accounting for 22.5 percent of total U.S. income. As Matthew O’Brien writes in The Atlantic, “it’s the one percent’s economy, and we’re just living in it.”

Senate OKs Bay Bridge name change, lawsuit seeks to overturn it

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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28

The California Senate gave its blessing to the rename the western span of the Bay Bridge after former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown on Sept. 12, blatantly disregarding mounting local opposition to the proposal. Since ACR 65 is a nonbinding resolution, Gov. Jerry Brown cannot veto it even though he went on record earlier this week saying the 77-year-old bridge should keep the same name it’s always had.

San Francisco Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee both voted in favor of the resolution.

The same day, Attorneys G. Whitney Leigh and Lee Hepner filed a complaint seeking injunctive relief to overturn the resolution on behalf of their client, good government advocate Bob Planthold.

At a press conference, Planthold said the lawsuit “has nothing to do with Willie,” but rather sought to remedy what he perceived as state lawmakers ignoring their own rules, a state of affairs he characterized as “Orwellian.” Here’s an excerpt of his comments to reporters:

For his part, Leigh questioned why Sacramento legislators were in such a rush to rename part of the Bay Bridge when construction of the eastern span had only just been completed, following long delays and overruns. “There is a shadiness and irregularity to this procedure,” he said.

The suit, directed at the California Senate and the Assembly and all the lawmakers responsible for pushing it through, alleges “arbitrary suspension and/or violation of legislative rules and policies” to fast track the legislation.

Specifically, Hepner said, lawmakers ignored an established timeline for introducing new proposals, instead allowing ACR 65 to be submitted four months after the formal deadline. Additionally, he said, the Senate Committee on Transportation and Housing was technically barred from meeting between Sept. 3 and 13 – a rule likely meant to keep lawmakers focused on more pressing issues, like approving 400+ bills before a Sept. 13 deadline – but nevertheless, ACR 65 passed out of that committee on Sept. 9 on an 8-1 vote.

Planthold previously served on the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and was previously an officer on the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Leigh is the former law partner of Matt Gonzalez, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who joined two other former board presidents to formally call on Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg to stop the resolution from going forward.

Despite Gov. Brown’s opposition to renaming the Bay Bridge, it remains unclear exactly what he’ll do about it now that it has formally passed. In response to a query about whether he would take steps to halt implementation, spokesperson Evan Westrup responded in an email: “Got your message. Don’t expect we’ll be providing further comment today.”

Legislature approves Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, but will Brown sign it this time?

Sasha Cuttler
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5
Legislature approves Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, but will Brown sign it this time?

The California Legislature today gave final approval to the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, legislation sponsored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) to finally extend some labor rights to this largely female and immigrant workforce. Advocates are hopeful that Gov. Jerry Brown will sign it this time.

As we reported in a Guardian cover story in March, “Do we care?,” domestic and farm workers are the only two categories of employees exempted from federal labor law, and the caregiving professions are consistently undervalued in our economic and political systems. Last year, Brown vetoed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, expressing the concern that it might hurt the economy and cost jobs.

But advocates for the measure came back even stronger this year than last, and they recently accepted a set of amendments in the Senate that weaken the bill but may make it more palatable to Gov. Brown, including eliminating the requirement for rest and meal breaks and giving the measure a three-year sunset and commission to review its impacts.

“We’ve had discussions with the administration and we think we’re on the right track to get it signed,” Ammiano’s Press Secretary Carlos Alcala told the Guardian.

He emphasized that the bill still retains the requirement that domestic workers, who routinely work more than 40 hours per week, are entitled to overtime pay, something that Ammiano also emphasized in a prepared statement.

“This is a historic moment,” Ammiano said. “This now goes to the governor for his signature. That will give these workers, mostly women, the right to be paid fairly for overtime worked.”

Katie Joaquin, campaign coordinator the California Domestic Workers Coalition, said she’s excited to see the bill pass and hopeful that Brown will sign it this time.

“If he signs this bill, California would be the first state to give daily overtime rights to all domestic workers,” she said, referring to its requirement that domestic workers get overtime pay after working nine hours in a day, the same standard as now applies to live-in caregivers. 

While she said it was hard to accept some of the amendments, such as removing the requirement that domestic workers get uninterrupted time for a full night’s sleep, she said they were acceptable conditions for this initial reform measure. And she said the sunset provision could actual work in their favor: “We plan to take that as an opportunity to fight for even more.”

The bill, AB241, was approved by the Assembly today on a 48-25 vote to concur with the amendment made in the Senate. Gov. Brown has until Oct. 13 to sign it. 

Proposal to rename Bay Bridge draws controversy

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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50

The proposal to rename the western span of the Bay Bridge after former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown is generating more controversy as it hurtles through the approval process in Sacramento, where lawmakers are staring down a Sept. 13 deadline before the legislative session ends.

Gov. Jerry Brown has expressed opposition to the idea, and the proposed name change prompted yet another scathing editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle. Former Mayor Brown, who also served as Assembly Speaker, publishes a weekly column in the Chronicle.

Chronicle columnists Matier and Ross reported Sept. 10 that Gov. Brown had met with Alice Huffman, a key supporter of the proposal and president of the California NAACP, about the proposed name change.

The partial renaming of the 77-year-old Bay Bridge has seen very little opposition in the state legislature, and backing from the NAACP might be a key reason why there has been such broad support from lawmakers. As it happens, Huffman has long been described as a friend of Willie Brown’s – she briefly worked for him when he was Assembly Speaker and later served as a political advisor, according to Los Angeles Times coverage.

Assembly Member Tom Ammiano opted to stay out of the fray and abstained from voting, a decision his spokesperson Carlos Alcalá explained by saying, “he’s hesitant to vote against it, because of course Willie Brown was a very important figure” in the California Legislature.

At the same time, Alcalá said Ammiano couldn’t support renaming the bridge, because “it has significant opposition,” and “he thought it was inappropriate to name it after a living person.”

Formal Assembly criteria states that clear community consensus must be in place when a major piece of public infrastructure is renamed. Yet in the case of the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge, no such consensus exists. 

On Aug. 29, former Board of Supervisors presidents Matt Gonzalez, Aaron Peskin and Quentin Kopp fired off an open letter to Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg in an attempt to halt the proposal from going any further. They urged him not to hear the resolution in the Senate Rules Committee, because the proposal appeared to conflict with Senate rules and “there exists significant concern in our community that naming the Bay Bridge for him is not appropriate.”

So far, the former elected officials haven’t gotten much in the way of a response.

“The state Senate has always been a club, and all those elected officials hope that someday things will be named after them,” Peskin told the Guardian. “I think they should name the old eastern span, that they’re demolishing, after him,” he added with a chuckle. “You know why? Because it’s old and crooked and a danger to society.”

California prisoners end hunger strike after Bay Area legislators call hearings

Sasha Cuttler
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9
California prisoners end hunger strike after Bay Area legislators call hearings

Bay Area legislators Tom Ammiano (D-SF) and Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) — who chair the Assembly and Senate Public Safety Committees, respectively — played pivotal roles in today’s decision by California prison inmates to end their hunger strike after 60 days.

The legislators last week called for legislative hearings to consider implementing some of the reforms that the prisoners and their supporters have been calling for, including changes to solitary confinement policies that critics say amount to illegal torture under international law.

“I am relieved and gratified that the hunger strike has ended without further sacrifice or risk of human life,” Sen. Hancock said in a joint public statement with Ammiano. “The issues raised by the hunger strike are real – concerns about the use and conditions of solitary confinement in California’s prisons – and will not be ignored.”

“I’m happy that no one had to die in order to bring attention to these conditions,” Ammiano said. “The prisoners’ decision to take meals should be a relief to CDCR and the Brown administration, as well as to those who support the strikers.”

The question now is whether the legislative hearings, set for next month, can persuade the executive branch to finally take action, despite the fact that both Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have taken a hard line on prison issues, even resisting federal court orders to reduce the population in the severely overcrowded prison system and to improve substandard health care.

Ammiano spokesperson Carlos Alcala told the Guardian that the end of the hunger strike could help end that stalemate: “Mr. Ammiano is hopeful that CDCR’s intransigence has been directed at negotiating under the hunger strike pressure, but that they will now be open to making some changes that are meaningful.”

CRCR head Jeffrey Beard issued a public statement saying, “We are pleased this dangerous strike has been called off before any inmates became seriously ill.”

Issac Ontiveros of the Oakland-based California Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity group said the hunger strike generated international attention and support, waking the public up to horrific conditions in the prisons and putting pressure on the CDCR to implement reforms.

“Their demands are legitimate and they are pointing out human rigths violations in California’s prisons,” Ontiveros told the Guardian, noting that Amnesty International and a long list of other groups are putting pressure on California to reform its prison practices. “What made them call off the strike was the political gains that they made…It was a thoughtful civil rights strategy.”

This latest hunger strike was called for and organized by prisoners in the “secure housing units,” aka solitary confinement cells, at the maximum security Pelican Bay State Prison, many of whom have gone years without meaningful human interaction. Court filings indicated that more than 400 prisoners have been locked up in solidary for more than a decade, despite the psychological harm that experts say such confinement causes.   

The prisoners today issued a long statement announcing the end of the hunger strike, which includes this excerpt: “To be clear, our Peaceful Protest of Resistance to our continuous subjection to decades of systemic state sanctioned torture via the system’s solitary confinement units is far from over. Our decision to suspend our third hunger strike in two years does not come lightly. This decision is especially difficult considering that most of our demands have not been met (despite nearly universal agreement that they are reasonable). The core group of prisoners has been, and remains 100% committed to seeing this protracted struggle for real reform through to a complete victory, even if it requires us to make the ultimate sacrifice.  With that said, we clarify this point by stating prisoner deaths are not the objective, we recognize such sacrifice is at times the only means to an end of fascist oppression.

“Our goal remains: force the powers that be to end their torture policies and practices in which serious physical and psychological harm is inflicted on tens of thousands of prisoners as well as our loved ones outside.  We also call for ending the related practices of using prisoners to promote the agenda of the police state by seeking to greatly expand the numbers of the working class poor warehoused in prisons, and particularly those of us held in solitary, based on psychological/social manipulation, and divisive tactics keeping prisoners fighting amongst each other. Those in power promote mass warehousing to justify more guards, more tax dollars for “security”, and spend mere pennies for rehabilitation — all of which demonstrates a failed penal system, high recidivism, and ultimately compromising public safety.”

Are Yee’s anti-tenant votes about courting contributions from landlords?

Sasha Cuttler
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30
Are Yee’s anti-tenant votes about courting contributions from landlords?

Sen. Leland Yee has never been a vote that renters could count on, from his days on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to his representation of San Francisco’s westside in the California Legislature. But now that he’s preparing a statewide campaign for Secretary of State, tenant advocates say he’s more squirrely that ever.

They’ve been rankled by a couple of key Yee votes this year — and by Yee’s apparent unwillingness to engage with them or explain any concerns he might have — particularly Yee’s vote yesterday against legislation that would allow cities and counties to reinstate requirements that developers include some affordable rental units in their housing projects, which the California Supreme Court took away in 2009 with its infamous Palmer v. Los Angeles decision.

That legislation, Assembly Bill 1229, was narrowly approved by the California Senate yesterday despite an aggressive opposition campaign by landlords and developers who initially got overwise supportive Democrats to take a walk and abstain from voting, although tenants groups were finally able to stiffen enough spines to win passage. It now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, who hasn’t yet taken a position on the measure.

“It directly overturns [the Supreme Court’s ruling on local inclusionary housing laws] and puts us right back where we were before the Palmer decision. It’s a hugely significant affordable rental housing measure,” Dean Preston, head of the statewide Tenants Together, told the Guardian.

But Yee, who provided the Guardian with a written statement in response to our questions, dismisses the bill’s significance: “SB 1229 is a piecemeal solution, offering a chance at lotteries in housing developments scattered randomly throughout the state. I’m proud to stand by my record of supporting effective legislation to provide affordable housing, supporting inclusionary housing and protecting rent control.”

Preston told us the statement “makes no sense and it doesn’t explain why he supported the same thing two years ago that he now opposes,” referring to Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 184, which died in the Senate two years ago.

But Preston did say that he’s happy to hear Yee explain himself, something that he’s been unwilling to do so far this year, including on his vote against Leno’s SB 603, who would have created sanctions for landlords that illegally withhold security deposits from their renters. It stalled in the Senate back in May.

“SB 603 would have invited lawsuits against landlords throughout the state, honest and otherwise, which would inevitably lead to property owners taking units off the market and driving up prices,” is how Yee now explains that vote to the Guardian.

But Preston said that explanation also doesn’t make sense, noting that Leno’s bill is already law in Alabama. “There’s no disincentive whatsoever for landlords to illegally withhold deposits,” Preston said, noting the he and other activists have fruitlessly tried for months to reach Yee on the issue. “It’s good to finally hear any explanation for his vote, months later.”

“There’s a pattern emerging with him where he won’t even explain his votes,” Preston said, noting that Yee “is running for statewide office and he’s trying to appeal to landlords and developers.”

Indeed, Yee will need to raise buckets of cash to reach a statewide audience, and he certainly understands who has the money these days. But Yee denies that he is carrying water for landlords, citing other pro-tenant votes: “I’ve always been proud to fight for tenants. Earlier this year, I cast the deciding vote for SB 391 which directs an estimated $720 million in state funds annually to the construction, rehabilitation and continued preservation of low and affordable affordable housing for everyone, families, seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, the unemployed, and the homeless. I spent years fighting for redevelopment agencies, one of only three Democrats to do so, which put a billion dollars a year into providing affordable housing throughout the state. These are programs that have been proven to be effective, an example of good results rather than just good intentions.”

UPDATE 3pm: Leno just returned our call from the floor of the Senate, where he said that Yee mischaracterized SB 603. “Those are the talking point of the industry and they’re just plain wrong,” Leno told us.

Leno said he modified the bill significantly to win support, including removing provisions that would have required landlords to keep deposits in separate accounts and pay interest on them. “All that remained is the penalty for a landlord that is was determined by the courts had illegally kept a deposit,” Leno told us. “And it still stalled. It’s the power of that lobby.”

Forget the Willie Brown Bay Bridge

Michael Redmond
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73

EDITORIAL As the California Legislature prepares to wrap up before fall recess, a resolution is working its way through the approval process to rename the western span of the Bay Bridge the “Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge.”

Brown, who formerly served as mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, is known for boasting about his hobnobbing with the rich and famous in his San Francisco Chronicle column, “Willie’s World.” But to longtime progressive San Franciscans who spent decades trying to stem the tide of gentrification, he was the powerful figure that rolled out the welcome mat for high-end developers and corporate interests, whose interests in San Francisco revolved around profit alone.

As mayor, Brown presided over land-use policies that resulted in high-end developments at a time when evictions were rampant, a trend that rings familiar in today’s tech-saturated San Francisco. Once, when pressed on the idea that his approach was making the city increasingly unaffordable, Brown’s famous retort was: “If you don’t make $50,000 a year in San Francisco, then you shouldn’t live here.”

It’s not just Brown’s insensitivity to struggling tenants, deep ties to corporate interests and high-end real-estate developers, or continued behind-the-scenes influence in San Francisco politics that cause us to squirm when we think about the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge bearing this politician’s name. There’s also the key question of whether Bay Area residents actually want to see this happen — and, given Brown’s historic role as a divisive figure, the idea that there is universal support for such an idea is laughable.

A legislative analysis presented to the Assembly Committee on Transportation a few weeks ago noted that lawmakers actually came up with ground rules for big decisions like whether a bridge ought to be named after someone, to “promote fairness.” The rules stipulate that such a proposal “must reflect a community consensus” — and guess what? Even Brown’s editors over at the Chronicle issued a June editorial opposing the idea.

Not only that, but proposals like this are only supposed to come from representatives of the district where the thing being renamed is located — yet this scheme came from Assemblymember Isadore Hall, a Democrat from Compton. But despite clear failure to adhere to these basic rules, only a single committee member voted against naming the bridge after Brown.

Interestingly enough, the bill even includes a request for Caltrans to determine the cost of posting signs commemorating Brown, which would evidently be funded by donations from unspecified private sources.

If the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is going to be named after anyone, we agree that the honor should be reserved for beloved 19th-century San Francisco eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton, the Scotsman who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States in 1859 and printed his own currency.

So far, a Change.org petition calling on Gov. Jerry Brown to name it the Emperor Norton Bay Bridge has garnered 1,800 signatures. “He was a champion of racial and religious unity, an advocate for women’s suffrage [and] a defender of the people,” the petition notes. That sounds more like something motorists can be proud of when they drive back and forth across the bay.

 

Tales from the tracks

Erica Hanna
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83
Tales from the tracks

news@sfbg.com

BART’s trains will keep running, for now, after a San Francisco Superior Court judge ordered the 60-day cooling-off period that Gov. Jerry Brown was angling for last week to address BART’s labor contract impasse. The injunction is in effect until Oct. 10, blocking any strike or lockout until then.

A report by the Bay Area Council said that the four-day strike in early July cost the Bay Area $73 million a day. That estimate was also a conservative one, according to a report put together by a special investigative board convened by Brown to look into the brinkmanship between BART workers and management.

“All parties agree that the major issues of the negotiations remain unresolved, including wages, health benefits, pensions contributions, and workplace safety,” the Aug. 8 report said.

Aside from the nitty gritty of the contracts, the two parties can’t even agree on math. The report found that the “parties do not agree on the magnitude of the gap in their respective economic proposals,” and that they are between $56 and $62 million apart on their forecasts of district finances for the next three years.

Management’s biggest concerns are still capital investments. Last year, BART approved a contract for 410 new cars, at a cost of about $2.2 million per car. The union’s proposals leave little room for capital improvements, BART management said at the Aug. 8 investigatory hearing.

But the unions say that BART is financially healthy and can offer a decent contract to workers. Out of a budget of $1.5 billion, union officials say payroll for their members totals about $200 million.

The unions and management will now have two months to cool off. But will that help along their negotiations? SEIU Local 1021, which represents engineers and custodial workers, doesn’t seem to think so.

“We have bargained unsuccessfully with this employer from May 13 to June 30, 2013 with no true indication from the district that it intended to reach an agreement,” the unions wrote in a letter to the investigative board. “We have no reason to believe that if a 60 day cooling off period were created, we would not be standing then on the precipice of another work stoppage without an agreement.”

Meanwhile, to put a human face on a labor standoff that has provoked sometimes nasty reactions from the public, we ran a couple profiles of BART workers on the SFBG.com Politics blog last week. The response was so passionate and overwhelming, we decided to run them in the paper as well:

 

ROBERT BRIGHT

First we met Robert Earl Bright, a 47-year-old transit vehicle mechanic at the Hayward yards, where he’s been for three years. BART trains seem tame compared to the machines he used to work with, starting out as an Air Force mechanic working on cargo planes.

It’s that experience he draws from when he said BART’s policies are becoming increasingly dangerous.

Bright is tall but soft-spoken, and while we sat at a bench in a courtyard at Lake Merritt BART station, he talked about the shortcuts BART has taken lately, and how overtime and consolidation are bad practices for everyone involved.

There used to be specific workers called Power & Way controllers who looked out for workers on the train tracks and made sure they were safe, he said, but those responsibilities were consolidated into a separate train controller position. Since then, Bright saw the death of a colleague, a mechanic who switched from a graveyard shift to a day shift and was hit by an oncoming train.

Only after the death did BART take steps to ensure parts of the track where there was less clearance safe from trains were marked, he said.

“The problem is BART seems to wait until someone gets killed until they want to do something about it,” he said.

Bright is a new grandfather. He helps support his daughter and her two toddlers, and he supports his older brother who suffers from dementia. Bright has a home that his fiancée bought, but is “upside-down,” as he says, because of a predatory loan.

He’s one of the lucky ones though, as the military pays for his health care, and the negotiations don’t impact him as far as that goes. But he does worry about his pension, and thinks he may have to cut back on supporting his elderly brother and his grandchildren. Even with those cutbacks in his life, he’ll likely have to look for a part-time job as a car mechanic, he said.

While contemplating that future, his four-hour daily commute, and the new expectations BART asked of his crew to repair more cars in less time, he started to develop an ulcer.

“They’re short on people, and it’s cheaper for the managers to pay for overtime than to pay for another person,” he said. The stress pressed on him and one day at work he grew dizzy and collapsed. That’s when he started to be a little more Zen about what BART asked of him. But he still said it’s not right.

“Our shop is a mod [modification] shop, but we got tasked with doing preventive maintenance. Our shop isn’t set up for that,” he said. And that means workers who aren’t trained for that particular job are pushed to fix up cars when normally they’re doing an entirely different job. That can be dangerous, he said.

“We have to make sure that those trains not only run, we also have to make sure they’re safe,” Bright said. “Something could happen, like a panel popping off. It touches the third rail, it could catch on fire. If we could miss something… it could cause a derailment.”

As far as Bright goes, he said he’s seeing more people working overtime at the request of managers, working longer hours that could lead to unsafe conditions — not just for the mechanics, but for the people who ride BART every day.

 

PHYLLIS ALEXANDER

Phyllis Alexander has been with BART for 16 years in systems service, which she said basically means, “cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.”

“Wherever they need me, that’s what I do,” she said.

Alexander often starts her days cleaning the elevators and escalators at Powell Street Station, and if you’ve been reading the news lately, you know what that means.

She doesn’t mince words about it: “I clean the urine and the feces out of the elevators and make sure it’s clean and smelling good for the patrons.”

But Alexander doesn’t hold it against the homeless. When she first started at BART, she had little contact with them. But over the years, she’s made good friends out of some of the homeless at Powell and 16th Street stations, and the latter is where she sat and told her story.

“As the years passed, it got worse. People living in their cars on the streets, in their doorways. I’ve met a lot of wonderful homeless people, wonderful people,” she said. And as the years went by, it got harder for the cleaning crew, too. She’s one of two systems service folk who take care of Powell Street Station at any one time.

“Sometimes it can be tough, it can get hectic, but we get it done. It’s hecka huge, and there’s only two of us, but we have to do the best we can do.”

But she keeps with it for herself and her daughter.

Her daughter just finished medical school and is still living with her. Alexander makes about $52,000 a year, she said, and couldn’t figure out major cuts she’d make in her lifestyle to make room for paying more into her pension or health care.

“It would hurt me,” she said. She said that though people in the Bay Area demonize BART workers for wanting a raise, she feels it’s simply been too long since they’ve had one.

“I think I haven’t gotten a raise in two contracts. It’s been like seven or eight years,” she said.

Devoutly religious, ultimately she keeps faith that the workers will prevail in negotiations.

“(God) is going to bring this through,” she said. “This thing with management, it’s going to be all right.”

 

For the Record: Clearing up misinformation about BART workers

 

HEALTHCARE

BART workers pay only $92 a month into their health care. Right? Wrong. “That doesn’t tell the full story,” said Vincent Harrington, a lawyer representing the unions at the negotiating table. “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.”

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

 

PENSIONS

It’s true that BART workers don’t contribute to their pensions, but the entity responsible for that is BART management. In 1980, BART made the proposal to pay employee contributions to pensions in exchange for wage concessions from BART workers. The unions recently proposed to contribute 7 percent of their pension benefits, with wage increases of 6.5 percent to offset that. BART management said they’d agree, if the wage increase was lowered to 0.5 percent instead.

 

WAGES VERSUS COST

A database constructed by the San Jose Mercury News lists a BART employee’s full cost to the taxpayer — often at around $100,000. This is their “cost” to BART, not the wages they take home, a common mistake regularly made by angry online commenters. All employees everywhere, private or public sector, have a cost to their employer past their base salary.

According to Intuit.com, a web resource for small businesses, business owners should consider that each employee they hire will cost twice the amount of their wages. This is normal stuff, people. It’s wrong, and not factually significant, to demonize BART workers for costing more than their salaries.

 

OVERTIME

BART employees have also been villainized for working overtime. But these employees don’t necessarily want to work overtime at all, and often do it at the urging of managers who have slashed so many workers in the past decade that the only way the trains will run is if everyone puts in extra work. A worker at the Aug. 7 BART hearing said, “I go to work before my daughter wakes up, and I’m home from work when my daughter goes to sleep.”

Some mechanics we talked to said that working overtime can also lead to more injuries, and a higher possibility of mistakes that could cost riders their lives.

 

SAFETY

Since 2010, 1,099 BART customers reported being physically attacked, and so were 99 BART employees. Those station agents often work alone at night and just before dawn, the only staff in the entire station. They want extra staffing to help meet OSHA recommendations that employees work in pairs. They also want better worker’s compensation coverage. Saul Almanza, a BART representative from SEIU Local 1021 and a 17-year railroader, said “The area where [BART mechanic] Mr. [Robert] 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.”

 

BATHROOMS

One of the underreported asks at the bargaining table is unlocked bathrooms. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, many of the bathrooms at most BART’s stations have been locked. This prevents customers and workers alike from doing as nature intended. It’s a matter of respect and dignity to be able to do use a bathroom while at your workplace, said one BART worker, Jon Kozlosky, at the hearing. THE TRAINS DRIVE THEMSELVES One of the accusations we see on our comment board with every article is that since the trains drive themselves, the workers must have little expertise. But the drivers still carry out many functions of the trains. Besides, most BART workers toil behind the scenes: 920 of BART workers are drivers and station agents, but about 1,450 employees are in mechanical maintenance, clerical, and other jobs (like sanitation).

Activists urge Gov. Brown not to veto the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights again

Sasha Cuttler
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5

Supporters of the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights are gathering outside the State Capitol Building this afternoon (Tues/13), culminating caravans that began with rallies in a half-dozen cities (including San Francisco this morning), hoping to extend basic labor protections to the people who care for our children and grandparents and clean our homes.

Although activists want to reach members of the California Senate, where Assembly Bill 241 awaits approval after clearing the Assembly (it now awaits action by the Senate Appropriations Committee), their main target is Gov. Jerry Brown, who vetoed a similar bill last year.

As we wrote in an April cover story on the issue, “Do We Care?,” Brown cited concerns that extending overtime, minimum wage, and other basic labor standards to domestic workers — who, along with farm workers, are the only workers exempt from federal labor laws — could cause employers to lay off or reduce the hours of domestic workers.

Activists said they were insulted by that paternalistic approach. Nonetheless, the bill was modified to address some of those concerns, said Carlos Alcala, spokesperson for Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who sponsored the bill last year and again this year. For example, he said it eliminated the need for state agencies to write new regulations to enforcement the measure.

“It now puts the rules into the code. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. If we write the rules, then the rules say what we want,” Alcala told us. Still, he said they’ve gotten no indications from the Governor’s Office that Brown would sign this version: “It’s really hard to read where he is, but the good thing is we’ve already been through this.”

Activists with the California Domestic Workers Coalition — which brings together domestic workers, their employers, labor unions, and progressive groups — say they’ve been lobbying the Governor’s Office but they don’t know where he stands.    

“Gov. Brown has not given any indication he’s going to sign the bill,” said Katie Joaquin, who is coordinating the campaign. “This caravan has involved numerous leaders from various communities urging Gov. Brown to work with us.”

Last tango: Investigators sort through BART’s labor impasse

Erica Hanna
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123

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.

 

 

 

California’s refusal to reduce its prison population is a sign of deeper problems

Sasha Cuttler
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40
California’s refusal to reduce its prison population is a sign of deeper problems

California just doesn’t get it when it comes to criminal justice. We have among the highest incarceration rates in the world (just below Russia’s, and about four times the European average); our prisons eat up far too much of our state budget; they are shamefully overcrowded, secretive, and inhumane; yet politicians from Gov. Jerry Brown on down refuse to show the courage or leadership to try a different approach.

When the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court — which on Friday upheld the lower court requirement that California reduce its prison population by 10,000 by the end of the year — is more progressive and enlightened than California’s leaders, you know there’s something seriously wrong here.

Rather than finally doing the right thing and complying with court orders to reduce a population that is still more than 43 percent over design capacity — despite reducing the population by 46,000 since 2006 because of court orders related to woefully inadequate health care in prisons — Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard yesterday responded to last week’s news by saying he will send more inmates to prisons in other states, at a high cost to California taxpayers.

What’s wrong with these people?!?! California prisons already lock up 124,363 people as of July 31, with another 8,959 inmates locked up in Arizona, Mississippi, and Oklahoma prisons at our expense. Tens of thousands more have been sent back to county jails under the state’s Realignment policies (which San Francisco, to the credit of its progressive approach to criminal justice, has managed to absorb and still reduce our jail population, thanks to smart alternatives to incarceration). And yet state officials still can’t get our prisons back to anywhere close to their design capacity?!?!

Of course, doing so would require rethinking decades of mindless “tough-on-crime” legislation that swelled our prison population. They’d probably also need to address the gutting of reentry and rehabilitation programs in the state, as well as conditions in some prisons that drive inmates mad (the subject of an onoing prison hunger strike). And they might even need to reform an economic system that is squeezing those on the bottom — sowing widespread economic insecurity that drives even law-abiding citizens to contemplate desperate measures —  just to maintain the wasteful churn of modern capitalism and the obscenely inequitable concentration of wealth at the top.

Hmm, I do believe that I’m starting to understand the motivations of our elected officials after all, those guardians of status quo power and privilege from both major parties. But if we’re ever going to move toward justice and sustainability, California’s prison system is probably a good place to start. 

Inmates on hunger strike win support from California legislators

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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33

The largest prison hunger strike in California history officially began on July 8, and though some California legislators have voiced support for state prison inmates, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) won’t cede an inch. Prisoners are in for a long battle.

Estimates indicate that over 29,000 inmates have joined ranks to refuse meals in 24 of the state’s 33 prisons and all four of the private, out-of-state facilities where California sends offenders. Additionally, thousands of inmates have declined to attend work and educational assignments since the strike commenced a week ago.

The CDCR released its own tally July 11, stating that there were only 12,421 participants. Asked about the discrepancy between numbers, CDCR Deputy Press Secretary Terry Thornton said, “we have inmates who skip a meal here and skip a meal there,” and clarifying that the estimate included only inmates who had met the CDCR’s official metric of nine consecutive missed meals up to that point. 

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who authored a 2012 senate bill aimed at increasing media access in prisons which was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown, issued a statement last week “join[ing] the protesters in urging prison officials to make more progress in establishing fair and humane policies in the prisons paid for by California taxpayers. We should not be the focus of international human rights concerns.”

This hunger strike, and an earlier pair that took place in 2011, was orchestrated by the Short Corridor Collective, a group of four inmates confined to security housing units (SHUs) at Pelican Bay State Prison, a supermax facility 15 minutes south of the Oregon border.

A network of legal advisers and prisoners’ rights advocates facilitated communication between participating inmates, and the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition is serving as the main conduit for information traveling from prisons to the public. The Coalition has summarized the goals of the strike in this video and mobilized support across the state. This past Saturday, July 13, several hundred activists participated in a rally at Corcoran, a California State Prison in the Central Valley.

In the Guardian last week, Toshio Meronek reported on the motivations behind the strike. The Short Corridor Collective’s five core demands include ending group punishment and long-term solitary confinement, abolishing a “debriefing policy” that encourages prisoners to exchange information about other inmates in return for favorable treatment, providing more nutritious food, and allowing for weekly phone calls and annual photographs. Inmate groups outside of Pelican Bay have documented separate sets of grievances, also published on the Solidarity Coalition’s website.

The 2011 strikes ended when the CDCR promised to create a formal “step down” process, through which SHU inmates could be vetted and prepared for reintroduction into general prison populations.

That program got underway last fall and, by all accounts, progressed slowly with limited success. In a press release issued Thursday, the CDCR disclosed that “since last October, [it] has conducted 382 case-by-case reviews of [gang] validated inmates housed indefinitely in SHUs. As of June 28, 208 inmates housed in SHUs have either been transferred or are approved for transfer to a general population facility and 115 inmates were placed in various phases of the Step-Down Program.”

At this rate, it would take nearly 20 years to conduct reviews of the over 10,000 inmates presently held in solitary confinement in California. Completion of the step down process, meanwhile, could take an additional four years for inmates enrolled in the first phase.

In a statement circulated shortly after the CDCR’s on Thursday, State Senator Mark Leno wrote, “I have concerns that this review process is moving too slowly and I would like to see it accelerated.” 

Leno stated “grave concerns about the Department’s over-reliance on the use of solitary confinement and in particular on a policy in which suspicion of gang affiliation is sufficient grounds for keeping an inmate in solitary confinement indefinitely.”

In a KALW radio interview Thursday morning, Thornton asserted that the CDCR doesn’t “negotiate with people who are trying to hold the prison system hostage. We don’t condone these types of disturbances. We will keep the lines of communication open. And we will manage the prisons as safely as possible with as little interruption to normal programming as possible.”

Also on Thursday, Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard’s confirmation was pushed through after being in limbo since Governor Brown appointed him in December 2012. Almost immediately, Beard declared all step-down reviews suspended, in what may well be the first official retaliatory action by the state against the hunger strikers.

Beard inherits not only the hunger strike, but a prison system long plagued by severe overcrowding, high recidivism rates, gross mismanagement of inmate health services, and a Supreme Court order to release close to 46,000 low-risk offenders.

“The prisoners are complaining about indeterminate solitary sentences not based on findings of misbehavior, but on alleged gang associations,” explained Rachel Meeropol, a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed a class action lawsuit against the state and CDCR last May alleging inhumane treatment of Pelican Bay prisoners through the use of security housing units. “California is an outlier in the number of prisoners that it holds in indeterminate solitary confinement.” In the CDCR system, inmates can spend decades in SHUs, sometimes without ever understanding what landed them there in the first place.

The hunger strikers seek a binding, written agreement from the CDCR that commits to a maximum sentence of five years in solitary confinement. Given the UN Human Rights Council’s recent judgment that “any imposition of solitary confinement beyond 15 days constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” and “should be subject to an absolute prohibition,” the Short Corridor representatives think their demand is reasonable.

In his statement last week, Ammiano indicated that he “continue[s] to be concerned about the policies being used to segregate prisoners who are deemed – often on weak public grounds – to be gang leaders.”

Donna Willmott, a member of the media committee for the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, said the vast majority of inmates in SHUs are there because they have received validation of gang affiliation from the CDCR. She described a “fundamentally flawed and corrupt” process, in which validating evidence is often scant.

“People have been sent to the SHU for indefinite terms for having Aztec art on their walls or a George Jackson book in their cells. And there’s no appeal process,” Willmott explained. “The way you get out of the SHU is parole, snitch, or die.”

Last train

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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17
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.”

 

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