Vol. 73/No. 37      September 28, 2009

I am one of 42 part-time train operators working at BART. I am very proud of my brothers and sisters in the Amalgamated Transit Union who stood up and said, “No concessions, no givebacks!” to the BART bosses.

The system couldn’t operate without train operators and station agents but could run very easily without the top-heavy layer of bosses and bureaucrats in downtown Oakland. To those who echo BART management’s claims of poverty and bad economic times, my response is twofold:

One, open the books. Let a committee of union members and the public look through BART’s real financial record of bloated executive salaries, monies for anti-union lawyers and boondoggle projects.

Two, if the economy being in a depression is a bad time to strike, then when is a good time? If longshoremen in San Francisco, auto workers in Toledo and Teamsters in Minneapolis had been afraid to organize general strikes in 1934, during the heart of the Great Depression, we might all be minimum-wage workers with no union protections today.

BILL KALMAN
Richmond
 
 
Related articles:
Bay Area transit union accepts new contract  
 
 
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