On Thursday, State Senator Steve Glazer blasted Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors as they approved new labor contracts for BART’s three largest unions.
BART approved the labor agreements in a 7-2 vote with Directors Debora Allen and Liz Ames voting no on the three year contract with
The agreements come as BART is facing a $33 million shortfall and ridership remains 58% below projected budget levels and 87% below pre-pandemic levels.
The contract does not include a wage increase in the first year, beginning July 1, 2021. The contract calls for conditional wage increases in the second and third years if average weekday ridership reaches at least 60% of pre-pandemic levels. The conditional wage increase rises incrementally with each 5% ridership bump above 60%.
The contracts had been set to expire on June 30, 2021. Members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1555 (ATU), Service Employees International Union, Local 1021(SEIU), and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 3993 (AFSCME) voted to ratify the contracts before today’s Board vote.
The new contract term is July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024. BART Police unions are under contract until June 30, 2022.
In addition to the wage provisions, the contracts include a number of changes, most notably adding Station Agent staffing at Antioch Station beginning March 22, as part of the next BART schedule change.
BART said the new contracts increase budget stability, but it does not preclude the possibility of needing to revisit cost saving solutions to BART’s budget crisis. The agreement includes specific language that gives the parties the option to mutually agree to reopen the contract if additional savings become necessary to avoid layoffs.
However, Senator Glazer, who previously called this labor contract premature and a big mistake, blasted BART and issued the following public comment after holding secret negotiations during BART Directors’ election campaigns:
Board members, thank you for allowing me to make a statement.
I want to state up front that everything I have to say today has to do with my views on accountability and trust that the public expects from all of us.
I think we all agree that BART is in a financial meltdown due to the pandemic and it has no clear plan for recovery.
The district’s own financial analysis projected a shortfall of tens of millions of dollars by next summer amid the steepest decline in ridership in the agency’s history.
The district needs all the flexibility it can get to avoid a financial disaster. Yet, BART is tying its hands with this agreement.
In the first half of 2021, BART will have a clearer idea about Covid-19 vaccine availability, ridership improvements, financial bailout assistance from the federal government, and the results of early retirement incentives already offered to existing employees.
All of these potential outcomes will provide important budgetary insight that should shape any new contract terms.
But instead of waiting for that information, you are now rushing to approve a contract negotiated behind closed doors, without public notice, that will prevent you from making targeted salary reductions if your revenues do not recover.
This will likely lead to service reductions and fare increases – which will hurt the very people you are here to serve.
So, I come here with a question: The current labor contract with their represented employee groups does not expire until July 1, 2021. So why did the district make an early agreement with so many economic unknowns?
BART has not even done a salary survey of other transit districts and public agencies to determine if the current salaries called for in this agreement are needed to recruit and retain qualified employees – basic data needed to inform any effective negotiation.
I question whether the failure to conduct a salary survey is in keeping with Board policy and procedures.
The public was never told when your negotiations started.
I’m told that these negotiations were initiated by the Board in September and October.
If true, that means that directors were negotiating with BART unions on their salaries and benefits on the one hand while asking the same unions for campaign contribution with the other hand.
This is an outrageous injection of politics in a hugely consequential employer-employee agreement.
And by setting the terms of the agreement at 3 years (rather than 4 years, based on past contract durations), the future contract will be negotiated during another election year.
In this agreement, you completely abandoned work rule changes, which were central to the 2013 contract negotiations.
You reversed important E-Bart reforms, instituted by former General Manager Grace Crunican.
It is not surprising that BART administration undertook these negotiations without public notice.
And, now you, the Board of Directors, seem prepared to rush the contract through with little public review.
It appears to me that BART’s management doesn’t want the public to see what they are doing because they know that BART riders and other Bay Area residents would not support this agreement if they understood its details and its consequences.
I hope you will reconsider today and vote this down, and take a more deliberate, cautious approach to these negotiations as you consider the full impact of the pandemic on our economy.
It would be for the best: for your financial well-being, and, more importantly, for BART riders throughout the Bay Area.
In closing, let me just say that the foundation of your service as Board members is to ensure that this transportation system is able to function during good times and bad.
This contract continues the limitation against training management to run the trains during a work stoppage.
So all of BART’s riders, many of them low- income folks who can’t afford to stay home, will be prevented from getting to work under this contract provision.
Teachers, nurses, social workers, grocery clerks and other essential workers will all be left stranded if your trains stop running because you are creating this self-inflicted problem.
This strike protection provision is an abdication of your sacred duty and will limit future boards from helping the commuter when matters can’t be worked out at the bargaining table.
Thank you for allowing me to put my statement into the record.
