Wow, some of these public servants make as much money as a 19 year old college dropout in Silicon Valley.

Did you mean the high end, or the low end?

A college dropout can make a killing in Silicon Valley, if they are also: a talented software developer.

OTOH, some of the other dropouts might end up working as BART train operators, who seem to make between 12 and 15k/yr, which is likely for full time, in a city where it costs about 1/4 of that just to scrape by on a monthly basis.

It is not right to employ people at a wage that they cannot possibly subsist on. These people all ended up as bart train operators for one reason or another. Maybe they were lazy. Maybe they got shafted in life. Maybe they're dumb. But does that mean they should be paid a substandard living wage? No.

Meanwhile the luckier, more industrious, or combination thereof, are making over 10x the amount of the lowest paid workers.

Min wage needs to be raised, a lot. Look at Australia.

Did you look at these numbers? Where do you think minimum wage applies here?

Yes, I actually looked quite thoroughly.

It applies in that the minimum wage is too low, so the bottom end of the workers have an extraordinarily unfair salary, in spite of the fact that they probably work 40+ hour weeks driving subway trains.

I have made a histogram to illustrate this problem: http://pastie.org/8106373

You can see from the data that the highest paid worker makes at least 25x the amount of the lowest paid worker.

This is not what I'd call fair. To be clear, it's not just the BART. We could do this with salary data from any municipality or corporation in the US.

I am operating on the assumption that many of the "train operators" are full time workers, which is not indicated in the data. I'd say it's a fairly good bet, though.

That is easily one of the most hazardous and unpleasant jobs, yet they are paid dirt. See, it doesn't matter how hard you work in our society. You can dig the dirtiest hole every day, sweat, and bleed, and you will be rewarded with a substandard wage. Instead, we reward the things that propel us forward, which does make sense: anyone can dig a hole. The problem is that not everyone has equal access to the means to acquire the skills which are so jealously rewarded. Yet, they do everything right anyway, work hard, and this is what they get. A 25x lower paying job than the highest paid executive.

We can fix this by raising the minimum wage to something fair. Australia has theirs at around $16 USD.

Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.

Some titles have PT in them. i assume this means part time.

If there were a large number of full time workers earning around minimum wage, I would expect to see a lot of salaries around 20k p/a. Only ~1% of total compensations are between $17-$23k and they all have job titles that can be found above and bell that band. About half have PT in the title and I assume others are something else other than full time.

Anyone above that band wouldn't be impacted by an increase in minimum wage. Anyone below that band is part time and may be earning near minimum wage, but most probably aren't.

I don't have a problem with minimum wages. But, it don't look like an increase would impact here anyway.

I will adjust my script to incorporate PT and repost asap!

Here's the data from the pastie

  Salary         Workers
  0-10000        180
  10000-20000    88
  20000-30000    97
  30000-40000    181
  40000-50000    167
  50000-60000    476
  60000-70000    633
  70000-80000    732
  80000-90000    322
  90000-100000   207
  100000-110000  99
  110000-120000  86
  120000-130000  56
  130000-140000  42
  140000-150000  23
  150000-160000  11
  160000-170000  7
  170000-180000  7
  180000-190000  4
  190000-200000  1
  200000-210000  3
  210000-220000  1
  220000-230000  1
  230000-240000  1
  240000-250000  1

If the US passed legislation to raise the minimum wage to a rate you feel is "fair" (whatever that means), how do you propose the Fed deals with the rampant inflation that'll surely erase any perceived benefits of said legislation?

The actual demand for goods and services which would rise as a result of the lower class having enough money to actually buy them is not the main driver of inflation. The main driver of inflation is the printing of more money which is inherit in our fiat currency system.

I advocate a return to a resource-based fractional reserve system as a way of mitigating inflation overall.

Since Nixon took the US off the gold standard, credit use has spiraled out of control: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2000/0900lead.pd...

You want to talk about increased demand causing inflation? Look no further than consumer credit.

Sometimes I wonder how big the public outcry would be if all SV software engineers decided to go on strike...

according to this table, most managers make more than an average sr engineer actually when you count the bonuses...

in fact, a police officer makes as much as i do, but he has more bonuses than i do, for example. I find that pretty high.

Or are we all getting $400K a year w/ bonus and I didn't get the memo?

Its only the lower end of the chain that gets shitty salaries at bart as well

Yeah I find it rather unsettling as well. The Chief engineer, presumably the highest paid technical guy :

Bay Area Rapid Transit,Chief Engineer,Maint & Engineering Admin,"$170,383",$0,"$3,466","$15,753","$20,385","$12,032","$1,869","$4,465","$228,353"

Not badly paid, but note the financial guys of the firm :

Bay Area Rapid Transit,Asst Controller,Assistant Controller,"$107,785",$0,"$214,322","$10,903","$13,017","$7,650","$1,869","$5,734","$361,279"

He has "half" the pay of the chief engineer and DOUBLE his salary in "Other" compensation. Hmmmmmm.

Bay Area Rapid Transit,Asst Treasurer,Assistant Treasurer,"$33,971",$0,"$289,534","$1,797","$4,072","$2,378","$1,869","$4,897","$338,518"

Same

Bay Area Rapid Transit,Asst Treasurer,Assistant Treasurer,"$33,971",$0,"$289,534","$1,797","$4,072","$2,378","$1,869","$4,897","$338,518"

Wow. Base compensation is $30k and look at the total. What the hell ?

That's what you find unsettling?!

Half of the top (over $200k) jobs are police.

How the hell do you get 8 times your base compensation in bonuses ? Now that's a skill I'd like to learn.

yeah id like some explanation as well

This is why this state is in such precarious financial situations. Poorly managed over-time, resulting in excessive salary payouts, which ultimately accrues into pension liabilities.

Wow. Lesson number one from this list is that if you want to make a boatload working for the government, be a cop. Aside from top administrators, the top ranks of the list are dominated by regular transit cops.

Usually the very, very generous retirement benefits drive high police compensation. Well paid overtime helps, too.

In San Francisco, SFPD can retire with 30% of their average 3 year salary after just 10 years on the job AND 55 years of age. Usually, this is around 100k for a 10 year veteran of the force. So, if one starts at SFPD at age 45, one can retire with about $33k per year at 55. There is also a COLA adjustment per year. Average life span for a male is around 76 years. The pension benefit ALONE is worth about $700k not including the COLA adjustment.

People wonder why this state and municipalities are SCREWED, and they wonder why several cities have filed bankruptcy or have skirted bankruptcy. This is PART, a BIG PART, of the reason.

And the ability to actually kill someone you don't like and not go to jail (though you could lose your job) is quite a perk as well.

It'd have been nice to anonymize this data. I know it's publicly available but we should respect people's privacy. I don't think having people's name adds anything interesting to this data set.

By law, salaries of public sector employees are public knowledge.

I think this is the same data that is seen here: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay%20Ar...

Yea I just got it from there. I thought it would be useful to some people in CSV format.

Thanks! I was thinking of asking the reporters for the data.

Though there's an error in the data. Starting at row #1001 ("Caldwell"), the "base" column seems to have disappeared.

Thanks! Fixed!

No, this is ALL public data. It's easily accessible ever since the CA state mandated transparency for all public service employee salaries.

By the way, if anyone wants to know what Terry Tao, math extraordinaire, is making, you can also find that on the CA gov website.

In general, I'd agree. However, considering the collective action the union has taken disrupting a vital service, I think they forfeit a bit of privacy in this case. They are public servants who are holding the public hostage.

They are not "public servants" they are humans who took a job that happens to be under a unionized collective bargaining agreement. Many of these people may not care about the union, and are just happy to have a job. They are not in a place to affect change in the way the union operates or negotiates and shouldn't have anti-union stigma placed on them or be the target of public reprisals.

Have some respect for people that just want to earn an honest salary and do good work at a job which puts them in daily contact with the entire spectrum of the human experience. They simply want to maintain a level of compensation that they have negotiated for, and that, frankly, every other worker should also be demanding from their employers, but cannot due to the erosion of union effectiveness and trust over the last 50 years.

They voted to strike. And yes, they assuredly are "public servants." It used to be that in exchange for working for the public and taking a lower salary, you'd be cushioned and shielded from recessions, in exchange for more stability.

Now, public workers are better compensated than the private sector and still maintain guarantees for their jobs.

So which is it? Because the way I and many other Californians see it, our state is in such dire straits because unions have squeezed the public dry, run up huge deficits to fund ridiculous pension plans, and haven't done anything beyond baseline to help the People.

> They are public servants who are holding the public hostage.

I have to strongly disagree with that representation, you could just as well say that the "public" is holding their livelihoods hostage. Labor disputes are a characteristic of our economic system and are essentially morally neutral.

The question that matters is, "Does including their names add any new insight to the debate?" I do not think it does.

Fair enough that it doesn't add to the debate. But, you cannot say the public is holding them hostage. Any one of them can quit their job and look for another at will. The "public" can hardly look for replacement labor.

(1) The public can look for replacement labor, they are called scabs. Or they can outright fire the strikers.

(2) The public can look for replacement transportation.

(1) There are usually fairly strong legal restrictions against hiring scabs. Especially for public sector unions.

(2) True, but the public cannot use the infrastructure that they paid dearly to build and have some claim of ownership to.

(1) The SCOTUS ruled in NLRB v Mackay Radio that hiring scabs was legal. To the best of my knowledge there are no additional restrictions specific to public sector unions. You are requested to provide documentation for your claim.

(2) It isn't the union stopping them from using that infrastructure, it is the government and their own lack of skills in its operation.

Are they all members of the unions / striking?

I don't know exactly how it works in USA, but generally if the union decides to go on strike, you don't have much choice as an individual member.

You have the choice to vote. The union voted to strike. Not everyone voted for it, but enough did to initiate the strike. It's usually a fairly unanimous thing.

Source: once upon a time, long, long ago, I was on the executive board of a union that may or may not have voted to strike.

The percentage of members of the two BART unions that voted for the strike is also public. It was not close.

   SEIU 98.5%
   ATU  99.9%

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-vote-to-a...

Sounds like they have legit grievances then.

> The percentage of members of the two BART unions that voted for the strike is also public. It was not close.

Those numbers (upwards of 90%) look like the numbers won by dictators in rigged elections. Who monitors the union voting process?

Union ballots are well regulated and usually even put incredibly unfair restrictions on the unions. They achieve this result in a very simple way:

Their members want it.

> Union ballots are well regulated

Says who? The unions? What outside observers monitor the ballots?

But if the vote to strike is going to pass easily, then surely you don't want to be an outcast and vote against it, right? Retaliatory actions from your fellow union members has to be common.

The ballots are secret.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-unions-rank-and-f...

Not nearly as common as retaliation from companies to unions. Ask Florida Daisy employees.

This is actually public and non-private on purpose.

If you hide a document and show the other one publicly it doesn't protects anyone privacy... wtf is this logic?

Here's a google spreadsheet quickly thrown together: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdHF...

Pivot table is grouped by Subtitle/Job title

Chart is ordered by base salary descending, but doesn't show the lower base salaries, so don't freak on those.

Very interesting. How come there are a bunch of people with $0 base salary ? Are those contractors, interns ? Also, some of those low-base employees seem to have very high employer contributions to medical/dental/vision plans. How does that work ?

Perhaps they're hourly.

I believe almost all of the employees on this list are hourly. To pick a semi-random example from the list, a "train operator" with $60,257 in "salary" and $55,453 in overtime is not a "salaried" employee like most of the people on HN are used to.

Some are explicitly called "intern" or "PT" (part time), some very much look like probable contractors, but I don't know how contractors end up with contributions to insurance/pension/etc, and others I see no obvious reason for such numbers at all.

Conceivably some of it could be attributable to oddities of recently-retired/fired/resigned employees, but I'm sure not all of it.

I think this dataset is impossible to make meaningful sense of without much more information on BART's employment practices, possibly wider laws/regulations on California public employees, and more specific information about individuals.

This is just mean. Why don't you put your own name and salary up there for us to see, mariusz331?

Whether your employer is the government or a private entity and whether or not you participate in a strike you don't deserve to have your financial data exposed.

They're public employees, their salaries have been public information for a long time.

Mean or nice doesn't have anything to do with it.

We the People pay and employ public workers. Ergo, We the People are entitled to see their salaries, and in this particular case, how badly they're "ripping off" the Public in general.

I support public employees, public employee unions, and the right of those employees/unions to strike. I also do not believe most of these salaries and other compensation are outrageous.

But I also support complete transparency in government. Ultimately, we are their employer, and we have a right to know how much we're paying them. I know this will sometimes have negative consequences for the employees, but this is a balancing of interests, and in the end, I believe we're all better served by this.

We would be better served still, however, if we knew exactly how these numbers came to be, because some of them are very strange. I'm guessing we could eventually figure most of it out with sufficient research, but ideally a subject matter expert would come forward and save us some time by explaining it.

Why would you support public sector unions? They face a very different dynamic than ones faced in the private sector. Here's a good write up: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/432...

It's a little humorous that they are talking about unions disrupting the political system when corporations spend infinitely more money on lobbying government.

Unions are corporations, too.

If unions protect workers from management, who protects workers from unions?

This is fucking absurd. Unions are unions OF WORKERS. A unions political power comes from the combined power of its members, who are citizens of the state and can thus be considered an accurate reflection of the citizens wishes. A corporation's political power comes from the top, and does not reflect anyone's wishes but the CEO.

> Unions are unions OF WORKERS.

But there's still someone in charge. Who polices them?

> A unions political power comes from the combined power of its members, who are citizens of the state and can thus be considered an accurate reflection of the citizens wishes.

By this argument, we don't need anyone watching the government because it is elected by the people and so represents the will of the people.

> But there's still someone in charge. Who polices them?

The union members vote on union matters. Do you know how unions work at all? Why are you talking as if you're an authority on unions when you don't even know this stuff?

> By this argument, we don't need anyone watching the government because it is elected by the people and so represents the will of the people.

Don't be ridiculous. The point is that a democratic organisation of workers exercising the collective political will of those members using the collective funds of those members, is quite clearly compatible with democracy, infinitely more so than companies spending billions to exercise the will of a small group of people at the top.

> The union members vote on union matters.

And who monitors the ballots?

> Why are you talking as if you're an authority on unions when you don't even know this stuff?

I'm not. I'm asking questions and being downvoted for it. Worse, none of my questions are being answered.

> The point is that a democratic organisation of workers exercising the collective political will of those members using the collective funds of those members, is quite clearly compatible with democracy

Only if the ballots are free and fair. Otherwise, it's just the union bosses dictating terms. So who monitors the ballots?

Does anyone have refutations to these points, or are union people going to disagree by downvoting?

The parts of that article I don't believe are factually incorrect are parts I fundamentally disagree with.

Trying to convince me public sector unions are bad by linking me to a conservative think tank rattling off a list of things public employees fight for/against is a bad idea. I fight for/against the exact same things.

So the answer to your question is, I'm a bleeding heart pinko commie bastard, that's why. Have a glass of vodka, comrade.

Thats the strategy, divide and conquer, make the private sector hate the public sector, make the nonunion workers hate the union workers, etc. As soon as they have enough haters to form a critical mass, the hated group gets shit on and they repeat the process with the next group.

Just so you know, I wasn't trying to insult you or start a fight. I think there are two interesting sections that most people may not have thought of/considered: THE POWER OF PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS & THE DISTORTION OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

e.g.

Correction officers’ unions are powerful forces in states like California and New York; they push for the construction of more prisons and for longer sentences for criminals (so that there are more people for correction officers to guard). Their activities in California are a case in point. In the last eight years they have spent $10 million on state politics — either in direct contributions to politicians or in spending on ballot initiatives relating to crime and punishment. They have mounted full-scale political campaigns. For instance, the California corrections union has attacked public officials, such as the Los Angeles district attorney, who supported an alternative to the union-favored “three-strikes law.” Indeed, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in February of this year noted that “the three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers’ union and that is sick!” In 1999 the union even successfully opposed a proposal to permit the California attorney general to prosecute brutality in prisons.

> Ultimately, we are their employer, and we have a right to know how much we're paying them.

Although I support the general sentiment I don't think this is clear cut. Should shareholders have the right to know the salaries of the employees at the companies they invest in?

This sort of thing is actually one of the reasons the public stock markets bother me. I do, in fact, believe that someone who has an ownership interest in a corporation should be privy to such information (and much more).

That said, it's up to the shareholders of a company whether they will force the company to release the information, and I can't blame them for choosing not to widely disseminate information that could be useful to competitors. I can blame them for being shareholders in companies with such fractured ownership, but I must blame myself, as well, for I also own stock in such companies.

In this case, however, there is no direct competition, and the "shareholders" of the public sector have wisely decided that they shall have access to this information.

well, it's available here too: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay%20Ar...

i just want someone to make some cool graphs with it

Can someone define what the headers are to actually understand what is compensation and what are benefits private sector workers don't necessary think about as comp (e.g. health insurance)?

I realize that: OT = overtime MDV = medical, dental, vision

But what is ER, EE, and DC?

I think pension entitlements would be an even more interesting file. These seem to be the expenditures that are crippling a lot of municipalities.