BART union workers already make an average gross pay of $76,500 -- the best among California transit agencies -- do not contribute toward their pensions and pay $92 monthly for health care. The new contract is expected to give workers at least a 12 percent total raise, start a 4 percent pension contribution and increase the medical premiums by about $50 a month.BART (Ind.)
That doesn't mean I don't understand why their employees want higher pay raises than what BART is offering.
But the BART employees are basically selling their labor/services to their employer. That means a raise needs to reflect at least one of three things: (1) inflation; (2) higher "input" costs (cost-of-living, in the case of workers); or (3) higher quality and/or quantity of labor from the employees.
A 12% raise more than compensates for inflation over the period being discussed. It may or may not offset COL increases, given how expensive things in SF generally are and are becoming. I'm not seeing how the employees are doing or have done anything to merit a raise in terms of the work they do. This is particularly true when you consider that in a matter of years or decades, they may themselves be obsolete, having been replaced by autonomous rolling stock operating by software and/or a technician in a remote location.
And I don't see how anyone in this era of structurally low interest rates would demand a pension with no personal contribution involved. It simply wouldn't work.
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