Rewarding Failure

For decades, as reflected in the Muni Library, Muni consultants, civil grand juries, and platoons of private and government auditors have reported -- time and time again -- that the heart of Muni's problem is absenteeism. The problem is -- demonstrably -- systemic, and it has been going on for so long nobody can remember when it started. To reverse an ancient saying: Muni management is in bed with labor.

Muni responded to August's Muni Metro meltdown by blaming the creakiness of the system's older Boeing cars and software glitches in the new train control system. By implication, Muni's failures could be blamed on technology and lack of staff, and fixed by enough money to repair or replace technology and hire more employees.

But money and employees are hardly in short supply. Funded Muni positions have been growing by 4.5 percent a year over the last few years. The agency's finance and administration staff has grown by more than 200 percent since 1993. And in the last two years, Mayor Willie Brown and the Board of Supervisors have thrown an additional $44 million into the Muni budget. Brown has pushed for, and Muni is in the process of, hiring 400 new drivers.

Yet, Muni service does not improve, and Muni managers go out of their way to hide the fact that union rules constitute a major cause of Muni dysfunction.

For to point at unions would be to point at their political allies. And their allies just happen to control City Hall.

Listening to Mayor Brown or Emilio Cruz, one might almost believe that Muni is grossly underfunded. In his recent State of the City speech, Brown apologized for not fixing Muni in 100 days and blamed lack of money. "Muni is starved," said Brown.

Public budget documents belie any such starvation. But there are reasons why Brown, who has long supported and been supported by organized labor, might focus on money, rather than union contracts, as the primary reason for Muni's continuing failures. For one thing, to focus on Muni's lenient union work rules would almost certainly anger labor leaders, including the political boss of the drivers union, Larry Martin. Martin, who pulls down $107,000 a year as vice president of the Transport Workers Union International, is also a city planning commissioner and longtime associate of Mayor Willie Brown.

Such a focus might also bring to the foreground Brown's role in renegotiating the Transport Workers Union Local 250A contract in 1996. The new agreement left intact almost all the special work rules -- including miss-outs -- that legions of auditors have identified as detrimental to Muni's performance.

Large subsequent budget increases for Muni -- increases meant to supply the "no excuses" budget that, supposedly, was to fund a Muni that works -- went largely to increased worker salaries and overtime. The union, meanwhile, has remained a bedrock supporter of Mayor Brown and his sometimes controversial political agendas, including public funding for privately owned football stadiums. The Local is also a major player in the San Francisco Labor Council, the umbrella union organization whose endorsement can make or break city political campaigns. The council endorsed Brown for re-election recently, more than a year before the election itself.

A mayor willing to address Muni's absenteeism problem would have to be willing to forego union endorsement and campaign support (which might well flow to his next opponent) and be willing to risk a mass transit strike that could all but paralyze the city.

Thus is the paradox of Muni perpetuated. The agency claims to be underfunded, but has plenty of money. And when public hatred of Muni explodes, politicians throw money at the agency, when what's needed is political will.

If Mayor Brown has avoided saying much that would anger Muni's unions, a dozen recent audits are more direct. They say Muni does not need more money, and, in fact, has more drivers than it can gainfully use behind the wheel of a bus or the controls of a streetcar.

In July 1996, city Budget Analyst Harvey Rose released a 200-page audit of Muni. In that document, Rose made nearly a hundred specific recommendations based upon his "limited scope" investigation of Muni operations. Two-and-one-half years later, only a few of those recommendations have been followed. Due to public outrage, Muni has stopped wasting thousands of gallons of diesel fuel -- and polluting the air -- by warming up buses hours early. But Muni has not made any headway toward improving service by requiring its employees to show up for scheduled shifts.

In looking at Muni's operations, Rose's auditors quickly ran head on into an odd fact: After nearly nine decades of operation, Muni management still had not figured out how to find its employees, much less make them work.