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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 25, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Labor's new offensive

UPS, BART victories show unions are on the move

By Brenda Sandburg in San Francisco

A six-day strike that shut down the San Francisco Bay Area's subway system ended in victory at 4 a.m. Sept. 13.

Three unions representing some 2,600 workers at the Bay Area Transit Authority built on the national momentum generated by the Teamsters' August victory in the United Parcel Strike to wage a powerful battle that united better- paid and lesser-paid workers.

Like the UPS strike, the BART walkout was an offensive battle. The bosses weren't trying for takebacks. The unions weren't forced into a struggle to defend what they had.

Instead, the workers decided to fight for more--to fight to win some gains. And they succeeded.

So the victorious BART strike joins the UPS strike as powerful evidence that the labor movement is back.

BART workers are relatively well paid, although that is offset by the very high cost of living in San Francisco. More to the point in terms of the strike's meaning for the labor movement is the fact that these workers were willing to take on the bosses in a tough struggle in order to lift up their more exploited co-workers.

That, in a broad sense, is precisely the task facing the whole labor movement today as the unions gear up to organize the unorganized and fight to end poverty wages.

There is every sign that low-wage workers are ready to fight. The splendid example of the UPS and BART strikes show that relatively more privileged workers will act in solidarity.

The stage is set for a new era of labor struggles.

SHOW OF WORKERS' POWER

The strike was impossible to ignore. It showed workers' power by shutting down BART. It shook up the Bay Area ruling class.

Service Employees Local 790, Amalgamated Transit Local 1555, and State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3993 won significant pay increases. They also modified the two- tier wage system that had been imposed on them in 1994.

AFSCME reached a settlement on Sept. 11--but its members stayed out, honoring the other two unions' picket lines until they too reached agreements.

BART workers had been working without a contract for several months after overwhelmingly turning down management's "final offer": a 3-percent annual wage increase and a wait of four to five years before new hires would reach the top pay scale.

The strikers demanded that the two-tier system, which covered Service Employees and Amalgamated Transit workers, be eliminated altogether. Under that system, BART paid workers hired after Jan. 1, 1995, less than those hired before that date.

Under the old contract, the newer workers didn't reach top scale for six years. The new contract shortens that period to three years for Amalgamated Transit workers and four years for Service Employees members.

In 1994, when labor leaders agreed to the two-tier system, they were told the disparity would eventually be eliminated. However, in negotiations BART bosses had argued that wage differentials are standard in recent agreements in the transit industry and that the BART unions should let the two-tier system stay.

Instead, BART workers took the offensive and demanded a reversal of this unjust pay scale.

BOSSES' PROPAGANDA WAR

The strike created a massive traffic gridlock in the city and outlying regions.

On weekdays some 275,000 people commute on the BART subways, which connect the East Bay to San Francisco. With BART shut down, tens of thousands of additional cars were on the road.

BART management and the corporate media tried to portray the workers as greedy and overpaid in order to turn the public, frustrated at traffic tie-ups, against them. Right- wing State Sen. Quentin Kopp blamed the strike on "union greed" and said he planned to introduce legislation that would prohibit strikes by transit workers.

But despite the coordinated anti-union offensive, the unions stood strong and and achieved significant gains.

Under the terms of the tentative four-year contract, BART workers will receive lump-sum cash payments the first year and 4-percent pay increases each July for the next three years. Three smaller BART unions that settled earlier will get the same pay increases.

There are also upgrades in the dental plan, which had not been improved since 1973.

The raises are not retroactive to the end of the previous contract, which expired June 30.

The unions had first threatened to strike in April. Over the summer Gov. Pete Wilson imposed a 60-day "cooling-off" period under state law.

Instead of cooling off, however, the workers got heated up--partly because that was the period during which the UPS strike energized the labor movement.

The final agreement was worked out after a group of labor leaders joined the negotiations to back up the three striking unions. Art Pulaski of the California Labor Federation called in the secretary-treasurers of the San Francisco Labor Council, the Alameda Labor Council and the Contra Costa Central Labor Council.

San Francisco Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Walter Johnson noted that wages for the workers had gone up about 2 percent in the last three years--while BART fares increased by 45 percent.

The deal must be ratified by the union membership, at a Sept. 19 vote.

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