Labor faces backlash over BART strikes

The two strikes that BART workers staged this year damaged the image of labor unions in California, particularly among middle-of-the-road voters, according to a new Field Poll.

The survey found that 45 percent of respondents said unions do more harm than good, while 40 percent felt they do more good. That's a large shift from when the Field Poll asked the question in March 2011, when 46 percent said unions do more good and 35 percent felt they do more harm.

Among those who described their political ideology as "middle-of-the-road," 47 percent in the new survey said unions do more harm and 36 percent believed the opposite. Two years ago, the numbers were reversed: 45 percent believed unions are generally a force for good, and 34 percent said they aren't.

The latest poll's findings are a warning to unions, said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo, heading into a year in which voters statewide could be considering a ballot measure that would increase public employees' pension contributions.

"A lot of this is due to the BART strikes," DiCamillo said. "It may have only affected Bay Area commuters, but it was watched around the state."

Ill will in Bay Area

Bay Area voters, despite being more liberal than those elsewhere in California, are now especially unsympathetic to public transit workers unions, the poll found. Although voters statewide support such unions' right to strike by a bare 47-45 percent, a majority of Bay Area respondents said such strikes should be banned.

"As effective as unions are in winning battles in Sacramento and at the ballot box, they may be losing the war in the battle for public opinion," DiCamillo said.

Steve Smith, a spokesman for the 2.1 million-member California Labor Federation, said the results of one poll did not concern him.

"The flip among moderate voters is probably due to all the attacks on unions that they are hearing about nationally," Smith said. "They are generally the voters who don't have a personal connection to a union, so they might not be familiar with how they can help people."

Workers 'in the fire'

BART employees "continue to be in the fire for taking a stand for getting a living wage and decent health care benefits," said Anna Bakalis, a spokeswoman for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, one of the BART unions that went on strike this year.

"Unfortunately, the riding public is caught in the crosshairs," Bakalis said.

Unions in California are in better shape than elsewhere in the country. Seventeen percent of workers in the state are union members, compared with 11 percent nationally. And while union membership dropped in nearly every state last year, unions in California gained 110,000 members, said John Logan, a professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.

Unions also retain political power in Sacramento. This fall, they persuaded Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a measure raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour - the highest in the nation - by 2016.

Big issue next year

Politically, bad feelings from the BART strikes may have an effect in 2014.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and four other California mayors are trying to qualify a ballot initiative that would force public employees to pay more toward their retirement. This month, state Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar (Los Angeles County), introduced a measure that would bar public transit workers from striking. Steve Glazer, an Orinda city councilman whose constituents spent idle hours on Highway 24 during the BART strikes, has made such legislation a cornerstone of his Assembly campaign.

Logan, however, said strike bans are unlikely to get far in the Legislature, where union-friendly Democrats enjoy a two-thirds supermajority.

"And as for putting it on the ballot," Logan said, "do you think anybody in Southern California would care about that?"

The Field Poll surveyed 1,002 registered voters in California between Nov. 14 and Dec. 5. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.