Supporting Transit Workers’ Fight for Hazard Pay
Many grocery, healthcare, and other essential workers in California have received hazard pay. But the frontline transit workers who have carried them to and from their workplaces throughout the pandemic have yet to receive compensation of any kind for the risk and sacrifice they have endured. Since July, frontline workers at three Bay Area transit unions — ATU Locals 192 (East Bay) and 265 (San Jose), and TWU Local 250a (San Francisco) — have banded together, with the support of Public Advocates and some of our Voices for Public Transportation Coalition partners, to demand that long-overdue compensation.
In July, we helped draft three letters (including this one) to transit agency boards, asking them to sit down with their unions to negotiate a fair compensation package. Since then, we helped support dozens of workers and riders who turned out for agency board meetings to urge them to award “hazard pay by Labor Day.” Although AC Transit invited a proposal from ATU Local 192, it has yet to respond to it and other agencies continue to lag as well.
To support frontline workers in organizing to win their demand, Public Advocates has trained rank-and-file union organizers to phonebank the many members who expressed interest in joining the fight. With other Voices Coalition partners and ATU members, we have also begun canvassing riders at Oakland bus stops, who overwhelmingly support our petition asking AC Transit to use an estimated $100 million in federal rescue funds to restore cut service, slash fares to bring back ridership, and award hazard pay.
Read Managing Attorney Richard Marcantonio’s account of the developing fight for hazard pay by frontline transit workers in the Bay Area in East Bay Majority. He is also quoted in the San José Spotlight on transit workers’ demand for hazard pay. And hear transit workers share their plight and their struggle in their own words in these moving testimonies on KPFA Radio.
