Downtown San Francisco Protest

If you were in stuck in traffic in downtown San Francisco today near Market St., Front St., or the Transbay Terminal, you probably saw a small protest. And you were probably one of the dozens of people with their fist affixed to their car horns. (We get the message; you want to get home. There’s no need to hold down the horn for 5 minutes.)

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, there was a small protest downtown today between 5 and 6 o clock.

It was an SEIU (Service Employees International Union). They came down Front St toward Market. Continued down to Mission St near the transbay terminal. They turned down Mission and went back up Beale toward Market. Then they turned back onto Market toward the Embarcadero. After that I got distracted and lost sight of them.

There was a small group of no more than 30 or 40 people, some in purple SEIU t-shirts, some in regular clothes. They were carrying signs, banging drums, and chanting something that was completely indecipherable to me. From the signs I gathered that the protest was janitors calling for fair wages. Seems fair enough to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I think unions are great. But there are some unions in the City that are completely screwing us over. Take the union Muni bus drivers are part of as an example. Those drivers are so damn coddled. We all have our horror stories and the local news media have run countless stories on them. They keep getting into accidents and running over people. This one report from ABC stories one driver who has nearly 100 complaints filed against him. You’d think he’d be gone after a while. Nope. Still driving.

There was another report that showed how a driver can skip work without notifying anyone several times before receiving a warning. (citation needed, can’t seem to find it right now). The same report showed that it takes a helluva lot of late days to get in trouble too.

Maybe that union in particular has gotten too much power. Maybe there is crappy leadership in Muni. Whatever the cause, San Franciscans are the ones who get shafted with late buses, crowded buses, and rude, aggressive, dangerous drivers. Incompetent people need to be fired. Shape up, or find a new job. As mayor of San Francisco (hahaha, kidding) I would fight unions that try to take the work out of holding a job (can a mayor do that?).

I do know this though. The unions that contribute to the city’s problems make it a whole lot harder for people to know which causes are noble ones to support. It used to be (from a rational progressive’s point of view) that all unions were good because all companies were being evil. Now you simply can’t tell if the former is true or if a union is pushing around the owners.

Maybe this SEIU protest is really justified (I sure hope so, I’m giving them advertising). And if it is, to whatever company is being protested: Please give them more money. Without janitors, you would actually have to clean up after yourself.

(Sorry for the crappy picture).