S.F. politician calls for labor peace at bus stops

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

With labor unions in negotiations with the transportation companies that ferry Silicon Valley tech workers, a San Francisco legislator is calling on the city to consider "labor harmony" when granting permits to corporate shuttles.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, one of the 11-member San Francisco city and county Board of Supervisors, on Tuesday introduced a resolution to ensure" labor harmony" at city bus stops, meaning the municipal authorities should weigh workers' rights as a factor in whether to allow transportation companies to join the shuttle program.

The proposal was forwarded to the Land Use and Transportation Committee, which will take it up Monday. The board is expected to consider it at a future meeting.

"We need to make sure that shuttle drivers are treated and compensated fairly and that traffic and transit operations aren't impacted by labor unrest at the shuttle companies," Wiener said in an email conversation. "We are therefore urging the Municipal Transportation Agency, when it grants permits for shuttle providers to use city bus stops, to include the existence or lack thereof of labor harmony as a factor."

Bus stops have become hot spots in San Francisco because tech giants such as Google and Facebook contract with local transportation companies to shuttle their employees to and from work. Those companies have permits to use the same stops that city buses do, leading some to complain about the buses clogging city streets and stops.

Recently, many drivers of the shuttles that travel to and from companies such as Apple, eBay, Facebook Yahoo and Zynga have voted to unionize.

Coverage by USA TODAY trained the national spotlight on the wage gap between employees of Silicon Valley tech companies and service workers such as the shuttle drivers who transport those tech employees. The drivers are employed by outside contractors and struggle to make ends meet.

Last month, the Teamsters negotiated a contract for the employees of Loop Transportation, which has a contract with Facebook for shuttle drivers. The contract, which the drivers approved, would give them higher wages — on average, $24.50 an hour, up from $18 an hour — and better benefits.

And on Friday, the drivers who work for Compass Transportation — it contracts with Amtrak, Apple, eBay, Genentech, Yahoo and Zynga — voted to let the Teamsters represent them, too.

Doug Bloch, the political director for Teamsters Joint Council 7, representing more than 100,000 Teamsters California and Nevada, said the union appreciates Wiener's concern.

"It means that if (the) drivers choose to ... organize a union, they can do that," he said, "or if there's a potential labor dispute, it's not going to spill over to those public bus stops."

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