Santa Cruz bus drivers have been on strike for the past week, which I have found particularly annoying since that's pretty much the only way I get around, other than walking. I’ve certainly been doing a lot of walking lately.
The issue is that they want the Metro agency to pay for more of their medical insurance. They make $24.80 an hour—sadly, better than I made teaching—and they're getting a $4 per hour raise by 2008, and they can’t take that extra $160 per week and put it into medical? So obviously I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the drivers.
The idea of a strike against a publicly-funded agency is stupid. Strikes are meant to cause employers to lose money, thus motivating them to make a deal with the striking workers. Who’s the employer in this case? A publicly-funded agency. A board of trustees that are elected or appointed to run it. They’re not losing any money by the strike. They lose nothing but prestige—and there’s not a lot of prestige involved in running a bus system anyway. You wanna increase pay and benefits for a public-agency job? Use your union to get a law passed! Going on strike doesn't hurt the employers; it only hurts the people served.
In this case, it’s the poor: those of us who don't have cars and can’t afford ’em. Bus drivers have long had nothing but contempt for the poor. Notice the way they treat the poor when they get on the bus. Don’t have enough money? “Get off.” Don’t know where you're headed? “That’s not my problem.” Don’t speak English? “This is America. Speak English.” Two out of three of them are some of the most obnoxious, unhappy people on earth, who don’t care if they do a sloppy job because the union keeps them from getting fired. And exactly why should I have to suffer from their lousy career choices?
To be fair, one out of three bus drivers are great people. They’re courteous, they drive safely, they’re on time, they’re pleasant conversationalists. The rest of the drivers drag ’em down by being just the opposite.
So in the meanwhile, I have to walk everywhere, which I can live with… for now. But not much longer. Hopefully the governor will order the strikers back to work soon, because the Metro board can easily outwait ’em, and that’ll take too long.