I was reading this article on some of the debates going on with the SF Board of Supervisors, where one of the supervisors suggested his intention on bringing a ballot initiative up this November to “force Muni operators to negotiate their salary, benefits and work rules through collective bargaining.” Currently, despite the fact that Muni faces service cuts and a budget shortfall, Muni operators are guaranteed no less than the second-highest transit operator salaries in the nation.
If you ask anybody who knows anything about say, capitalism, economics or even math, they’ll tell you that the arrangement is batshit insane.
So let’s recap, a supervisor suggests the Muni union be forced to use collective bargaining to determine wages, which seems reasonable, and what happens in City Hall?
Daly jumped in to respond to Elsbernd’s comments, saying that if the city wants to save money, it should look at agreements with all unions, beginning with the police. ‘‘Supervisor Elsbernd targeting basically what amounts to a largely black and/or African American union not only has the issue of racial undertones’’
Holy race card Batman! Bargaining, a fundamental tenet of our capitalist society gets one deemed a racist by Supervisor Daly? He’s clearly preoccupied with race, which will sure help bail Muni, and the city, out of their budget deficits this year.
For those of you unfamiliar with San Francisco city budgets, this city somehow pisses away an annual budget of over 6 billion dollars a year, and our streets are terrible, homelessness continues to be a big issue, Muni is a mess and Market St still smells like urine.
When my lease is up in June, I’m leaving San Francisco.