Commuters in San Francisco are scrambling to find alternative transportation or enduring the sometimes hour-long wait for a bus as this morning's operator sickout drags on into the evening.
Two-thirds of San Francisco's Muni fleet, or about 400 vehicles, remain sidelined tonight, as bus and rail operators show their anger over the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's proposed labor contract. Muni has some 700,000 boardings per day.
Muni is barred from striking, but Michael LeRoy, professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign, says sickouts effectively have the same effect as strikes. He spoke with KQED’s Mina Kim on Monday.
“They function very much like a strike,” LeRoy said. “It is a withdrawal of labor by workers, and it’s meant to put pressure on the employers. In that sense it’s a de facto strike.”
The SFMTA will deny pay to operators who called in sick on Monday if they cannot prove they were ill. But LeRoy says management can take additional action against them if they can’t prove they were ill.