BART Striking ATU 1555 Picket, Speakout and Protest Against BART Board Of Directors

For those of us who are working in the SF Financial District because we do not take BART to work, or any other reason, we are enjoying the twice daily pickets of BART workers at the Montgomery BART station entrance on Market and Post Streets. They usually picket in the morning, lasting until 10 a.m. or so (I assume they arrive at 7 or 8 a.m.), and in the afternoon, from 2:30 or 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. or later. Everyone who wishes to do so can join their pickets with chants, contribute our own chants, and celebrate the fact that labor finally stood up!

The strike needs to expand if management tries to impose a contract. All transit union labor in the Bay Area should join BART workers if that happens to broaden the strike. Only with a serious labor movement can we win socialized medicine, abolish the death penalty, abolish the prison industrial complex, guarantee free, public school top quality education to all from preschool through university, have free, adequate, safe, top quality public transportation, provide top quality housing for all and much more.

When labor withdraws its hand, nothing moves. With our own eyes, we can see that in the San Francisco Financial District each weekday that the transit workers at BART are on strike. The sidewalks have about one-fourth or less of the foot traffic and all of the cafes, especially Starbucks, are practically empty. This means that despite the carpools and alternate bus transportation, most people stayed home this week. It is, of course, summer vacation and a 4-day workweek, with a major holiday this week, on a Thursday, which means Friday, July 5, will be at least as quiet as Christmas Eve, which was a Monday workday last year, and had less people in the area than on a Sunday. The more people stay home, the stronger labor's position is because no profits can be made by all affected businesses, forcing the employers to demand that BART sign the union contract.

The Friday, July 5 return to work in the afternoon on the old contract supposedly for 30 days is the imposition of the employer contract. Labor's strength is in being able to withhold its labor. This is what happens when the unions give their money to the anti-labor, pro-war and fascism Democratic Party instead of building a strike fund that will sustain the members through long strikes. Today is practically a holiday as people take the Friday after a holiday as a day off for a 4 day weekend. There is no good reason to have the trains rolling today at all. Let us remember that BART has spent $1.5 million of our tax dollars on union busting Veolia Transportation consultants to bust the union, and this BART board is mostly if not all Democrats as you cannot get elected to anything in most cities in the Bay Area if you are a Republican. We need an expansion of the strike to as many unions as possible in the Bay Area by August 4, the new deadline.