Anna Kuhre may be on to something. The San Mateo resident and former president of the city’s United Homeowners Association has broached some ideas to lessen the increasing traffic burden created by new and growing high-tech businesses here.

Concerned that the quality of life on the Peninsula has become untenable due to a massive surge in development, she has urged that business operations with 1,000 or more employees consider significant changes in the workweek.

For starters, she is proposing that such enterprises find ways to have at least five percent of their workers shift to evening/night assignments and/or weekends.

She offers that studies have shown that such moves would have a significant impact on local road congestion during normal commute hours. “It would not be a silver bullet,” she noted last week. “It would be a start.”

Would that plan, if implemented, by voluntary or mandatory? She said either way there would have to be incentives for companies and employees to get on board.

She is in the preliminary process of enlisting the services of state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, in an attempt to craft legislation that would address these matters.

But, she added, something has to be done because neighborhoods are seeing unprecedented traffic snarls. She expressed particular pessimism about developments, both underway and planned, adjacent to the already-gridlocked freeway intersection of Highway 101/92 in San Mateo.

She said it’s time (past time, really) for the thriving tech companies, in particular, to become part of a coordinated solution.

Is this union biting the hand that feeds it?

The relationship between officials at Stanford Hospital and their counterparts representing the Service Employees International Union has often been less than pleasant.

Disputes over a variety of issue have been ongoing for years. Lately, the tone and tenor of this uneasy labor-management marriage have taken a rather bizarre turn.

In ominous blurbs promoted through Bay Area media, the union, never a shrinking violet, has been essentially urging the hospital’s customers to think twice about utilizing its facilities.

The reason: Alleged unsafe and unsanitary conditions said to be prevalent there.

So let’s get this straight. The union, whose members rely on jobs directly related to the supply of patients at the hospital, has been tossing out dire warnings that, at least in theory, could dissuade people from using it. Strange.

It seems to be a classic case of “biting the hand that feeds you” taken to a new, calculated, organized level.

Imagine, for a moment, if other displeased labor organizations used this oddly counterintuitive tactic in other industries.

You could see disgruntled Canada Airlines workers putting out something like this: “When you hear the phrase ‘water landing’ near SFO, maybe we ought to install pontoons on all our aircraft.”

Then there might be angry Costco employees: “Hey, there’s a reason why we sell coffins. Just check out conditions on our loading docks.”

Or Facebook people: “If you thought your personal stuff was going to be private for very long, we’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn we’d like to sell you.”

Or workers at Pfizer, Inc. (Viagra) : “That four-hour male excitement warning is for real and so is the custom socket wrench needed to remedy the problem.”

You get the idea. A mixed message never works out well in the end.

Aron Hoffman

The Good Friday passing of Aron Hoffman, a former San Mateo mayor, marked the end of an extensive career of public service on the Peninsula. He was 73. The cause of death was cancer.

An accountant, he volunteered and assisted a variety of local entities over the years, including the Human Investment Project, the Family Service Agency, the Lesley Foundation, the Mills-Peninsula Hospital District and the J.H. Robbins Foundation.

A longtime San Mateo resident, he had lived in Burlingame in the early 1970s as well. His career was marked by an engaging, conciliatory and cooperative style that tended to bring people together, a positive quality that benefited those who knew and worked with him.

John Horgan’s column runs weekly in the Mercury News. He can be contacted by email at johnhorganmedia@gmail.com or by regular mail at P.O. Box 117083, Burlingame, CA 94011.