Bart station attendants make over 3x the median rider. They do nothing but sit in the booth. They don't sell tickets or monitor fare evasion, and they are infamously unhelpful at answering questions.
> Bart station attendants make over 3x the median rider.
which job title specifically are you referring to? from the pay schedule linked above, the closest thing I see is Station Agent, with a pay range of $73-86k.
and where are you getting the data on the median salary of a BART rider?
BART claims says their median rider makes 50k, based on a survey they conducted in 2020. You can find various sources by searching "rider profile" or something like that.
I downloaded the results from that page, loaded them into a spreadsheet, and less than 25% are earning more than 150k/year and only 17% are higher than the 160k median income.
All these involve overtime which means:
- lower quality of life
- either not having kids or having to hire someone to take care of them
There is definitely something wrong if the system allow people to only take a handful of days off a year, is there a hiring freeze or something? Any sane manager would prefer having more workers that rest fully and stay motivated than people extending their times and becoming fatigued, demotivated and grumpy in the process.
Where did you get the median income from? Also, median household income is different from median income. According to the last census, median household income in San Francisco is under $120k[1]. That is household. The average income for a person is less than $82k[2]. Oakland and San Jose are lower than that.
What I mean by "corruption" is
that the compensation in the story you shared is from 2018, and it's still going on in 2021 (the compensation data I shared)
They were paid slightly more than enough to afford average rent for an average unit in San Francisco. They earned it by working overtime. By working more than full time and being compensated according to their employment agreement. The idea that that’s corruption is mind boggling to me. I don’t know whether you just want janitors to be underclass by definition or whether you object to people being compensated for their work, or what could possibly be the problem here.
Personally, I think everyone should be able to afford to live comfortably wherever they are. And I think janitors and other people who do often thankless and grueling work should be compensated substantially more than they are, not less. If it were up to me, no one would have to work overtime to afford average rent where they work so hard already.
It's over double area median income. It's simply not the case that it's just enough to survive or anything like that. Those people could afford to live almost anywhere in the bay area easily.
The part that makes it corruption is that BART is overpaying to pad the pockets of specific more senior members of the union at the expense of less senior members and the public.
To make it concrete, I have a very nice and spacious apartment in a good location in SF. Around 85% of BART employees could easily afford my apartment, based on public data (less than 30% one month pay).
