Opinion

BART unions must not ignore the public view of workers

BART trains and traffic flow as usual at the Rockridge station in Oakland, Calif., Monday, Aug. 5, 2013, after a late-night decision by Gov. Jerry Brown to stop the BART strike. Brown imposed a seven-day injunction and created a three-member panel to investigate the contract talks. (AP Photo/The Contra Costa Times,Laura A. Oda ) less BART trains and traffic flow as usual at the Rockridge station in Oakland, Calif., Monday, Aug. 5, 2013, after a late-night decision by Gov. Jerry Brown to stop the BART strike. Brown imposed a seven-day ... more Photo: Laura A. Oda, Associated Press Photo: Laura A. Oda, Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close BART unions must not ignore the public view of workers 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

It was the summer of 1931, and 17-year-old Paul McCombs had a small rock in his shoe.

But if he stopped pulling weeds in the farmer's Central Valley field long enough to remove the rock, he would be fired, and one of the desperate men waiting on the sides of the field would be called in to replace him. No one was standing up for workers such as McCombs, and such workplace grotesqueries were, if not the rule, not uncommon, either.

For McCombs and millions in California and beyond, there was no union protection.

McCombs eventually became a union carpenter and was finally able to collect a small union pension in addition to his Social Security. But even as he gladly accepted the wage increases the union won for him, he worried. "We're going to price ourselves out of the market," he would say.

He was more prescient than he knew.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that 2010-11 union membership decreased to 11.1 percent, part of a long-term downward trend since 1983, when union membership stood at 20.1 percent of all wage and salary workers.

BART employees are part of a shrinking group of workers who have higher-than-average pay and benefits because of union representation. To a nonunion burger flipper in a fast-food emporium, $70,000-plus per year with relatively low payments for health insurance and no contribution toward pensions is a dream beyond imagining.

What does it all mean? It means that a smaller and smaller cohort of union workers is making salaries that are farther and farther away from the money earned by the average worker.

And second, there seems to be a national trend of indifference toward the union movement in an age where highly skilled, in-demand, nonunion workers - those in Silicon Valley, for instance - are making high salaries with plenteous benefits while other workers count themselves lucky to have a job at all, never mind rhetoric about workers' rights.

The trends are there, they are not likely to go away, and attention must be paid.

BART union negotiators may regard all of the above as interesting, if academic, background far removed from the task at hand - getting more money for their members.

But they cannot afford to permanently ignore what's happening in public and private workplaces across the nation. Whatever they do ultimately win for their membership is likely to accelerate the trend of a have-and-have-not American economy.

Whether they realize it or not, they are living in the workforce equivalent of a gated community, with all that implies for the average worker and already problematic public attitudes toward unions. McCombs never lived in one.