Here's what I glean from online comments about our second BART strike in four months: Most feel BART's workers are both overpaid and personally undeserving of the salaries they make. Many express frustration about their apparent lack of ability to do anything to stop the walkout. And some have some ideas for how to change things so that BART can't strike again. (One representative BART comment thread is here:.)
More on the commenters' ideas in a minute.
First, let's acknowledge there is a murmur of dissent among the anti-strike comments -- a handful of commenters pleading the case of the BART workers and defending unions for helping some attain a living wage. (See the end of the post for a couple examples.)
But the volume is a lot louder from the other side. Some commenters state a rational proposition based on reporting that's out there about BART worker salaries -- comments along the lines of "I've always sympathized with unions, but what they get and what they're asking for is way out of line with labor market realities." But though I haven't gone through and made a comment matrix of anti-BART strike commenters to separate all the emotional and ideological strands, I think it's fair to say the frustration that most of them express goes well beyond logical market arguments. Some commenters accuse workers of being greedy, of being lazy, of not being grateful for having jobs in in hard economic times. For example: