Stay Tuned: Let Me Speak to Your Manager, Please

Hope Johnson

By Hope Johnson

February 23, 2010

Its firm, round length held motionless, sleek and pulsing with ready heat.  Long, powerful and primed, its sliding forward thrust was frustratingly denied.

A case for a little pay-per-view action?

No!  It’s the fate of the Comet in Atlas Shrugged as Taggart Transcontinental’s train is stopped dead in its tracks when her crew abandons their jobs.  Even the company’s fancy executive aboard the stalled train is stranded.  She can schedule trains, set policy, and make demands, but she still can’t make the trains go.

All public transit, like the Comet, is dependent on those trained to operate our planes, trains, and automobiles.  That means Muni operators are the boom-boom-pow groovin’ your daily bus commute.

As one Muni operator told the Board of Supervisors during a Rules Committee hearing, “We are the people who take the people from uptown to downtown.  We move the city.”

For weeks, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and managers at the Municipal Transportation Authority (MTA) have conspired with the shameless mainstream media to avoid responsibility for their poor management of Muni.  Rather than demand substantive improvements of themselves, they prefer to aim Muni rider anger toward average Muni workers, creating the false impression operator salaries and attitude have caused the MTA’s massive budget deficit.

Don’t be fooled by their superheated rhetoric and lack of leadership.

Elsbernd claims that amending the City Charter to eliminate the salary floor set in 2007 for Muni operators will significantly lower operator pay and, therefore, Muni’s annual budget.  That’s just not likely.  Any starting salary, private sector or union, is determined based on comparing similar jobs in similar metropolitan areas, cost of living in the area, and the value placed on the job.  Since San Francisco is (1) a Transit First city (transit jobs highly valued) and (2) the fourth most expensive place to live in the United States (high cost of living), then, by standard salary calculations, Muni operators, along with all people who work in San Francisco, will always be among the highest paid in the country whether that’s chartered or not.  (Did you know PUC meter readers earn the same salary as Muni operators?)

Focus on operator pay alone distracts from demanding accountability from those authorizing that pay, or overtime, or the $60 million dollars of work orders the MTA now owes other city departments.  If you were on a customer service call and the service rep was rude, then added a bunch of fees to your account, you’d definitely demand, “Let me speak to your manager!”

And that’s just what Supervisor David Campos has asked the Board of Supervisors to do today.  Campos requested an audit evaluating the efficiency of oversight decisions made by the MTA Board.  He wants to review procedures for determining service divisions, use of staff and outside consultants, overtime approval, and management of capital projects worth millions of dollars.

Even Supervisor Carmen Chu, commonly politically to the right of Campos, agrees the audit is a good idea.  Chu has smartly demanded the audit focus first on issues that could help her analyze upcoming budget discussions.

Now, if only the Mayor would stop cowardly pitting seniors and disabled persons against Muni operators (renegotiating operator union contracts includes no guarantee the MTA will not increase senior and disabled fares anyway), he might want to ask to speak to the manager himself.  He might conduct good faith labor negotiations while also asking his self-appointed MTA Board if it would help to:

(1) Extend parking meter hours to Sundays and evenings, or add meters to areas such as SOMA;

(2) Renegotiate work orders and MOUs like those paying the SFPD to park free in North Beach garages;

(3) Emphasize the use of 511 instead of 311 for next bus info (311 charges call costs to the MTA);

(4) Start sharing costs when services such as event traffic enforcement benefit other city agencies;

(5) Evaluate middle management salaries and tasks, adding supervisors for pedestrian and bicycle traffic with experience generating revenue in those areas;

(6) Allocate Federal Transit New Start money from the Central Subway project to Muni so the subway will be part of a reliable and sustainable system; or

(7) Provide the Board of Supervisors with appointment power to the MTA Board to ensure options unpopular with the Mayor’s re-election campaign, or moneyed interests, are fully and accurately explored.

Hope Johnson

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