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D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

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Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#51

Post by deeths »

sadadar wrote: post #11
smtddr wrote: post #9

Hey, so... this is a sorta good time to ask. I assume this website's visualization was meant to spark some discussion. Do people on HN support/condemn the BART strike(s)? I've always been under the impression that the huge salaries being reported were some how an exaggeration. Because of this, I support the BART strike(s)... but perhaps my impression is wrong. Also, the strike doesn't impact me nearly as much as some…

I think the graphic is also fairly misleading starting with total comp instead of base salary or cash take home. I know when talking about my salary or how much I make things like value of my medical insurance is rarely something that comes up.

They have the other stats, but in the drop-down, but consider that this is a situation where in some cases salaries+overtime are 2.5x the base salary.

Only a small number of workers are skewed that high, but the overtime is significant for a large percent of workers.

They should have excluded other benefits by default, but I think you need to include the overtime to get a real picture.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#52

Post by webjprgm »

cmsmith wrote: post #46
mikeyouse wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what happened. She had been employed for 21 years and accrued that much PTO over that period. http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/07/24/barts-golden...

I'm just going to add that I think it's silly to get paid your last salary for vacation time you earned when you were 25. While I don't care for caps on the accrued time, I see nothing unfair about scaling the time by your salary - such that if you have 100 vacation days and you get a 10% raise you now have 90 vacation days.

Personally I don't care about being paid for unused vacation days. I just want my vacation. And I don't want to have to use it all for Christmas. (Some employers I've worked for give you a week or two for Christmas automatically, some make you use your allocated days.)

I think it makes sense to pay out for vacation days one could have taken but didn't when they quit or get laid off. I'm not sure it makes sense to pay for vacation not taken in previous years, but maybe.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#53

Post by webjprgm »

yannyu wrote: post #18
rmc wrote: post #12

USA is weird. How come you can get this data on people's personal lives? Why do you not have privacy laws?

Public employee salary is public knowledge: http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area As an aside, I think the hush-hush nature of salary is pretty silly to begin with, and really only hurts employees.

I might point out that some employment contracts specifically say you can't discuss salary with fellow employees. (I know I read it somewhere I applied or worked, probably at my current job too.)

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#54

Post by speeder »

asveikau wrote: post #40
jsnk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything unreasonable here as they are public workers. They are paid for by taxpayers and taxpayers should damn well be able to see how much public workers get paid. Besides, the public workers all agreed to this when they enter into the contract.

Why do their names have to be listed if they're just a mechanic or whatever? Why not strip the names unless they are in some kind of leadership role?

I think you never met Brazil, where once the government even found government paid cooks earning 50k BRL month (the Brazil President wage is 19k BRL month, that is about 10k usd month)

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#55

Post by samstave »

zorpner wrote: post #48
samstave wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is my perspective as a daily BART rider where 99% of the time I also have a bike, as well as often travelling with small kids/strollers (Forgive my BART Rage): If you have ever taken a BART elevator; every single BART employee should be fired, here is why: BART elevators, in 100% of my experience over the years has been a cesspool covered in urine and who knows what. EVERY time I take the elevator - I hit the em…

> I hit the emergency help button and complain about the stench, the state of the service. Please stop wasting everyone's time with your abuse of the emergency help button. Your problem is not an emergency. Additionally, you do not "have to pay" for the experience, you choose to do so.

The last time I used the piss-laden elevator with my children there was a homeless person convulsing on the platform of embarcaderro station.

You have no clue what you're talking about - Bart is broken and their staff are near useless.

I'm not wasting time and your a pretentious jerk for trying to tell me "I don't have to pay for their service"

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#56

Post by asveikau »

speeder wrote: post #54
asveikau wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do their names have to be listed if they're just a mechanic or whatever? Why not strip the names unless they are in some kind of leadership role?

I think you never met Brazil, where once the government even found government paid cooks earning 50k BRL month (the Brazil President wage is 19k BRL month, that is about 10k usd month)

As I said, I am not even saying remove the "Profession, Salary" fields. Just the names for most people.

When someone digs through the data and sees the cook being paid that much, perhaps they start to ask their government some questions.

Or come up with any other criteria for whose name gets released. Just don't make everybody's name visible by default because you're fearful of the nepotistic chef scenario...

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#57

Post by javajosh »

Wow - I'm a lot less interested in the BART strike and more inspired about the idea that news stories and their source data will be published as github projects. This is an amazing concept. I can fork this "story" and edit it to my liking, add different analyses, commentary, etc. I could combine the data with other data - all without bothering the author. I can also verify the data, amend it, etc (which is a little risky).

But overall, the idea of an interactive news story in git is one of the best things I've seen so far this decade.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#58

Post by throwaway86 »

samstave wrote: post #55
zorpner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hit the emergency help button and complain about the stench, the state of the service. Please stop wasting everyone's time with your abuse of the emergency help button. Your problem is not an emergency. Additionally, you do not "have to pay" for the experience, you choose to do so.

The last time I used the piss-laden elevator with my children there was a homeless person convulsing on the platform of embarcaderro station. You have no clue what you're talking about - Bart is broken and their staff are near useless. I'm not wasting time and your a pretentious jerk for trying to tell me "I don't have to pay for their service"

Actually, you're the pretentious one here, using a device specifically labeled for emergencies to complain at someone every day about the cleanliness of the elevator. They're telling you it's not their job because you're ringing the fucking police, not custodial staff. You are diverting police resources away from, you know, responding to rapes and stabbings because you're a precious snowflake that can't handle a bit of piss on his way to work (undoubtedly in a city that also smells like piss). I'm surprised you haven't been arrested or shot yet, particularly since you are arrogant enough to believe that the rules do not apply to you. Take your bike in the elevator and suck it up. I bet you sneak on with your bike during rush hour, as well.

Those of us that ride BART daily are smart enough to understand that BART has culturally drifted into a transportation service that is inappropriate for children. Particularly during rush hour, BART is an extremely unsafe place for children, and the reason you are disgusted by bringing your children onto BART is because you are taking an unnecessary risk by doing so. You are correct that it shouldn't be this way, but you are a terrible human being for abusing BART employees for the situation in the manner that you do.

We get it. BART is disgusting in some places. You know what? It still beats the hell out of traffic for me every day that I rode it, and I don't walk around making my problems everyone else's problems because I expect perfection out of everything I do. It's a public transportation service, not your personal train. Hop off your horse, get in line with the rest of us and shut up, or go on Craigslist and buy a car, for crying out loud. You're a technologist. You can afford one.

God, I hated people like you when I commuted daily on BART. People like you are too self-absorbed to realize that they make everybody else's commute suck by broadcasting and/or protesting how much the commute sucks. If I had a dollar for every time someone tried to sneak a bike on during rush hour and then had a standoff with the train operator, making the rest of us miss our transfers, I could buy a car.

The only person broken in this situation is you. You wouldn't last a second in New York. I'd think twice about letting these comments stand attached to your name, because they make you look really bad. Like, I hope I never interview you bad.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#59

Post by discardorama »

smtddr wrote: post #9

Hey, so... this is a sorta good time to ask. I assume this website's visualization was meant to spark some discussion. Do people on HN support/condemn the BART strike(s)? I've always been under the impression that the huge salaries being reported were some how an exaggeration. Because of this, I support the BART strike(s)... but perhaps my impression is wrong. Also, the strike doesn't impact me nearly as much as some…

> Basically, I want to know if BART employees are being overpaid for what they do.

Correction: this BART strike (threat...) is from the "train operators" union.

Consider the fact that BART trains are (almost) fully automated. The "operator" does nothing more than monitor things. If there is an emergency evacuation, s/he would help the passengers get out of the tunnel or whereever they are.

Now, given this: why should an operator make $100K? Take a look around: how many other jobs pay this much with so little qualifications? A starting teach in SF makes $54K, after a Masters degree and certifications. A BART operator needs a few weeks of classes and that's about it. You can train a person in a few days to run BART trains: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?id=9255291

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#60

Post by ojilles »

cmsmith wrote: post #46
mikeyouse wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what happened. She had been employed for 21 years and accrued that much PTO over that period. http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/07/24/barts-golden...

I'm just going to add that I think it's silly to get paid your last salary for vacation time you earned when you were 25. While I don't care for caps on the accrued time, I see nothing unfair about scaling the time by your salary - such that if you have 100 vacation days and you get a 10% raise you now have 90 vacation days.

Well, I'd assume here vacation time from 25 years ago didn't incur compounded interest?

(I'm actually in favor of a 1~2 year cap, but I'm betting she left money on the table by not getting it paid out)

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