San Francisco Chronicle
BAY AREA
BART pay ranks high for transit workers
At contract time, agency surveys comparable pay
Patrick Hoge, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, July 3, 2005
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BART
2 big unions OK new 4-year pact with BART (7/20)
Local transit agencies debate use of close circuit cameras (7/18)
BART tickets feature A's, Giants players (7/12)
No fare increase under new pact (7/7)
Sigh of relief from commuters (7/7)
Transit alternatives found online (7/7)
BART strike averted (7/6)
BART, union going down to wire (7/5)
Expect gridlock if BART strikes Wednesday (7/5)
BART pay ranks high for transit workers (7/3)
2 BART unions offer new proposal (6/30)
Peninsula line falls short of hopes (6/30)
Union dislike new offer (6/30)
2 unions say they'll walk Wednesday if deal not reached (6/29)
Commute alternatives
Talk about BART
BART workers who are asking for raises in contract negotiations with the transit district are among the highest-paid transit workers in the Bay Area and the nation, according to transit officials.
And train operators, station agents, clerical and maintenance workers for the Bay Area's largest transit district also earn slightly more than the average for all public and private sector workers in the region, according to federal labor surveys.
The wage issue, along with the cost of workers' benefits, is at the heart of contract negotiations between BART and its two largest unions this weekend that are aimed at averting a strike on Wednesday morning that experts say will wreak havoc on the region's commutes.
Negotiators for the two sides met Saturday and were expected to continue talks through the long weekend.
"The two sides have been talking on and off all day. ... We're at the table, and that's a good thing," said BART spokesman Linton Johnson, who declined to discuss specifics but described negotiations as "critically sensitive at this point."
"We're all working very hard to make progress," said Harold Brown, president of Amalgamated Transit Union 1555, on Saturday night. "I'm cautiously optimistic."
Unions representing BART's train operators and clerical and maintenance workers say they are not overpaid, given the region's housing and living costs. They say that the number of managers has increased significantly in the past decade while frontline staff members have been cut. They also contend that managers are overpaid.
Regardless, management says it can't afford to continue paying workers what it says is an average of more than $90,000 a year in wages and benefits, because the cost of benefits is rising rapidly and the system has a $24 million deficit in this year's budget.
Contracts for 2,700 BART employees expired Friday.
BART says it already pays average wages of $64,428 a year for members of its two largest unions, the Service Employees International Union 790 and the Amalgamated Transit Union 1555. Workers in those unions, which represent 2,300 of the district's nearly 3,000 employees, also receive an average benefits package of $29,750.
By comparison, BART station agents are the highest paid among those at seven transit agencies surveyed in a study commissioned for BART earlier this year. BART's station agents earn maximum wages of $64,236 a year, compared with an average $49,260 maximum for the other agencies, in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Chicago, according to the survey.
The highest-paid station agents at the other agencies were at San Francisco's Municipal Railway, at $63,492 maximum a year, followed by the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority at $59,316 and Washington Metro at $51,120.
BART had the second-highest-paid train operators at $64,296 maximum a year, compared with those working at 12 other agencies, which paid an average of $49,848 maximum, according to the study. Highest was the Port Authority Trans-Hudson in New York at $64,932 maximum per year.
AC Transit bus drivers were paid considerably less, with drivers averaging $40,560 and topping out at $47,923. Under a two-year agreement approved Friday, drivers and mechanics will earn 3 percent more.
BART mechanics, meanwhile, are the third-highest paid among those at 13 local government agencies in the Bay Area, including San Francisco Muni and AC Transit, according to figures provided by SEIU 790.
BART's latest offer, made Wednesday, would give workers 2 percent raises in each of the final two years of a four-year contract, limit health benefits to Kaiser Permanente's costs and raise employees' monthly contributions from about $25 to $150 over four years. Nationally, the average employee contribution for family medical care is $265 a month, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The unions' counteroffer on Thursday asks for annual raises of between 2 and 4 percent over three years, with current and retired employees paying $75 a month for family health benefits and able to choose plans other than Kaiser without paying extra.
ATU 1555 workers, who include station agents and train operators, get an average of $62,774 in wages and $29,412 in benefits, for a total of $92,156, BART says. Clerical and maintenance workers in SEIU 790 are paid $66,082 in wages and $30,089 in benefits, for a total of $96,171.
That works out to $30.18 an hour wages for station agents and train operators and $31.77 an hour for clerical and maintenance workers.
By comparison, in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area during the first quarter of 2005, full-time employees -- including white-collar and blue-collar workers -- averaged $27.35 per hour, according to the labor statistics bureau.
Nationally, BART's average compensation package was 74 percent better than what full-time private industry workers received, which was $39,998 in wages, or $19.22 an hour, and benefits worth $17,347, according to the federal statistics.
State and local government workers nationwide in the first quarter got wages of $50,461, or about $24.26 an hour, plus benefits worth $23,379, for a package worth $73,840.
BART employees received 22 percent increases in wages over the past four years. By comparison, over the past four years, average wages of private sector employees increased by about 11 percent for the nation, according to the bureau.
BART also funds 100 percent of its employees' pensions (through CalPERS) by making both the employer and employee pension payments, which costs BART the equivalent of 7 percent of each worker's salary.
E-mail Patrick Hoge at phoge@sfchronicle.com.
