since they can do so anonymously. Of course many will do so proudly and announce it. Of course I voted for labor.

you can see who voted which way.

I'm curious who will vote with management given that their name will be visible, a real 'line in the sand' type of moment.

...because as someone who works for a public transportation agency, I can understand the following points:

* Public agencies don't WANT to deny money to their employees

* And, neither do they have "profit sharing" among the executives

* They DO have to balance their budgets

* To increase salaries for labor, they need to either cut operating expenses (and cutting management salaries won't do it), increase fares (affecting the riders) or receive more local subsidies (out of their control)

If you want, feel free to yell "waste, fraud & abuse": it's the favored line of Republicans opposed to public transportation funding

(for purpose of clarification: I work for Management, and I haven't received a pay raise in four years.)

I'm saying it's not the role of a PUBLIC transportation agency to decide on what workers "deserve". It's their job to provide public transportation services as cost-effectively as possible. Perhaps your anger should be directed at the localities that provide 25% of BART's operating funds: City of San Francisco (Democratic); Alameda County (Democratic); San Mateo County (Democratic), Contra Costa County (Democratic).
I'll also observe that the BART Board is directly elected by the residents of the service Counties. Ultimately, a Union contract will need to be approved by the Board. How well are they representing the workers?

...I'm opposed to public Unions striking for something the public Agency is unable to provide.

The people who are vocal about disliking workers standing up are usually proud if their views. Union-hating is considered edgy for some.

We know all about how management gives themselves hefty raises over the years no matter what they did to either employees or riders.

We have already had them change some things we were promised on retirement.

or the votes would be far closer.

but that BART goes full court press on its staff in the public arena, as well as a top down management style that leaves their staff in the dark when there are problems, probably just piss the workers off so much that the workers have zero trust in the agency.

fast forward to the pay raise offered and it turns out it has a bunch of contingencies in which case BART will not award the raise.

1) the staff can't possibly trust this agency to follow through on the raise in good faith
2) the staff must be really, really pissed off that it appears BART wants credit for offering a higher, but still low, raise that it has no intention to pay on.

i still remember how when they were getting ready to put up new station signs in downtown SF, they took down all the station signs on the platform (so you couldn't tell which station you were at). though i and others complained immediately and the agents contacted their management, and even their person on Twitter responded wanting to help, it took almost a full week to even put up paper signs.

I'm going to side with Lisa. She almost always seems to know what she's doing.

Thanks for lightening the mood.

But solidarity is not a death pact, and there have been strikes I didn't support.