BART ordered to pay $1.1 million for contracting out union work

Community Service Officer K. Tate takes down information after checking the light and fire systems as part of her fire patrol in the Powell BART station April 12, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Community Service Officer K. Tate takes down information after checking the light and fire systems as part of her fire patrol in the Powell BART station April 12, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close BART ordered to pay $1.1 million for contracting out union work 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

BART officials had to cough up nearly

$1.1 million to civilian members of the agency’s police union for work the district had already paid rented guards to do, according to an arbitration ruling obtained by The Chronicle on Tuesday.

The payout comes as the cash-strapped transportation agency plans to ask voters to shell out billions for upgrades to its outdated and failing system, and as officials and transportation workers have agreed to a tentative deal to raise pay over four years.

The ruling last month stems from work that BART management hired nonunion, independent contractors to do, starting three years ago when the agency began replacing outdated fire alarm systems at several stations.

During the retrofit, BART’s community services officers — uniformed civilian employees who are members of the police union — should have been put in charge of watching the stations in case a fire broke out, Ronald Hoh, the arbitrator in the case, said in the December ruling.

Instead, BART hired a private security company for the job, which the union said violated its contract with the agency.

“We disagree with the arbitrator’s decision, but we are bound to honor it,” BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said. “The arbitrator determined we made an error in staffing for an unusual situation.”

On March 18, officials cut checks totaling $1,088,982 that averaged out to about $30,000 in lost pay for each of the agency’s roughly 40 community services officers, attorneys for the BART Police Officers’ Association said.

“This was by far the biggest grievance award I’ve ever been a part of,” said Sean Currin, the police union’s attorney. “Hopefully, this will discourage other public safety agencies from attempting to illegally subcontract law enforcement services.”

The work began in 2013 when the district hired private company Blocka Construction to replace its 40-year-old alarm systems at six BART stations in San Francisco and one in Daly City.

Part of the deal, though, was that someone given the “fire watch” job would monitor the stations during the construction.

But rather than assigning community services officers —who carry radios rather than guns — to the costly graveyard-shift work that would have included overtime pay, Blocka hired private security guards.

Among their jobs, workers from Unlimited Staffing were in charge of monitoring a temporary fire alarm, overseeing the new construction, and making sure all fire extinguishers were in place.

As part of their contract, BART’s community services officers do a variety of jobs, which include monitoring construction sites and equipment during off-hours, reporting crimes to agency dispatchers, issuing parking citations and conducting security sweeps of parking facilities.

BART argued that the “fire watch” duties were not part of the union’s contract and that the community services officers had never done that kind of work before.

Representatives for the union, though, said the position was nearly identical to work it had done in the past.

Community services officers were in charge of monitoring the Transbay Tube for a year and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They also watched over construction sites in Orinda and Hayward and fire and security alarms in district buildings, Currin said.

Javier Fregoso, 46, has been a BART employee for 26 years, and a community services officer for eight. He brought up the issue with the union in 2014 after spotting security guards at the 16th Street Mission Station in San Francisco.

“I questioned them about what was going on,” he said of the guards. “I said, ‘Hey, what exactly are you supposed to be doing here?’ They said, ‘We have a whistle and blow it if there is a fire.’”

Fregoso took the matter to union president, Officer Keith Garcia, who filed a grievance on May 6, 2014.

“At that time, even the chief agreed with me,” Garcia said Tuesday, referring to former BART Police Chief Gary Gee. “But BART’s position was that it did not violate our contract, and they denied the grievance.”

After listening to arguments from both sides during two hearings over the summer in Oakland, Hoh concluded that the work done by the private guards was “similar to that performed by community services officers,” and sided with the union.

The award — which essentially has BART paying twice for the same work — is the latest public matter involving the agency to draw negative attention.

In recent weeks, a mysterious power surge between the Pittsburg-Bay Point and North Concord stations knocked scores of cars out of service, prompting weeks of transportation delays and ire from commuters.

And days before the electrical malfunction, The Chronicle reported that nearly two-thirds of BART’s cameras on board trains were decoys following a still-unsolved public killing aboard a train that was not captured on video.

All the while, the agency is pursuing a $3.5 billion bond measure for transit improvements.

BART managers on Monday, though, announced a tentative deal with workers to raise pay over four years. Officials painted the deal as a victory that would avert possible shutdowns like two in 2013, when workers walked off the job and stranded riders.

The new contract bumps the average union salary in 2021 to about $77,000 a year. BART would not say how much money the deal will cost the agency.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky