Worker, exec pay - 2 sides of BART deficit

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 5/6/9 | Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross

[SmithL]

How many BART workers does it take to fix a broken train seat?

Two - and that's no joke.

One to replace the bottom of the seat, and another to replace the back.

It also takes two types of janitors, at $28 an hour apiece, to clean one of the open-air BART stations.

One sweeps up indoors, and another works outdoors - the boundary between the two defined by "the drip line" where rainwater falls from the station's roof.

Management is holding up those rules as examples of the type of featherbedding that the transit system's unions must surrender if BART is going to survive a $249 million shortage looming over the agency during the next four years.

BART hopes to eliminate that deficit by raising fares, imposing parking fees at more stations - and cutting labor costs by $100 million.

For their part, union leaders who are being asked to reduce benefits and cave in to work-rule changes are questioning just how serious BART executives are about sharing the sacrifice.

They point to 18 BART executives who together took home $3.4 million last year - making them among the best-paid transit-system bosses in the country.

Topping the list was BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger, whose 2008 earnings with bonuses totaled $334,856.

BART General Counsel Matthew Burrows made $234,311. Embattled BART Police Chief Gary Gee - whose handling of the fatal New Year's Day police shooting of a reveler on the Fruitvale Station platform in Oakland has led to calls for his dismissal - was paid $201,255 in 2008, including $31,838 in bonus pay.

But then, BART managers say the workers are also among the best-paid in the country - and the costs are only made worse by those outdated work rules.

Take the train operators, who get a 15-minute break at the end of every run.

[SmithL]

[Foolsgold]

Has anyone been able to find a factual number of University of California employees VS Students, I had read somewhere IT WAS APPROACHING 2 employees for every 3 students.