My condolences to our friends in the Bay Area, now that the BART workers are on strike. Sounds like a good week to take Friday off. The worst part of the strike is probably that now Sgt. Tom Haymond will have to drive to work (hope his black Jag is in OK enough shape to drive). Good luck to striking workers, but they seem to be in kind of a tough position, PR-wise. I don’t know all the details, but from what I’ve read, the union has already agreed to increase employee pension contributions from the current 0% to 4%, and have already agreed to about a 56% increase in healthcare costs (from $92 to $144 a month).

The two sides are about 4% apart in terms of pay, however, with BART offering 12% and the union asking for 15.9% (this is where the bad PR comes in, I think – hard for some schmuck who hasn’t had a raise at all in a few years or has had to take a cut to feel sympathy for somebody turning down 12%, especially when they have to walk to work or are sitting in traffic ‘cuz the trains are shut down).

BART is also refusing to allow a neutral arbitrator to rule on a package of benefits that workers currently get, but which BART wants to get rid of (call in sick, work four days and get paid overtime on the fifth day, leave projects in the middle of a job to go work on something else, get paper check stubs instead of electronic notices).

Personally, I could live without the paper “advice” I get, even though I have direct deposit (not only do they have to print the damn things, but they then actually mail them to me at home, which seems dumb), and I’m not sure about leaving one thing to go do another. Doesn’t seem like a “perk” to me – seems like responding to the most urgent needs. As for OT, although I’m not personally eligible for it, it’s always been my opinion that OT should be paid for anything over 8 hours in a day, not based on how many total hours you worked that week.

Anyhow, good luck to both the BART workers as well as the folks who have to find a way to get to work. I hope this is over sooner rather than later.

No commuting for me today, thank goodness. But I suppose I ought to get back to work.