Scheduled BART Strike Reveals Human Side of Supply Chains
Today’s supply chains are global, complex, interconnected, often automated… and yet undeniably “human,” as well. Anyone who lives or works in or around San Francisco was reminded of this simple fact over the past week as a strike by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) employees loomed like a big, black, congested storm cloud over our heads.
Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1555 and BART management couldn’t see eye-to-eye on terms in a new four-year contract, and as a result union workers were scheduled to walk off their jobs at 12:01 this morning.
Shutting down BART –which has a daily ridership of about 340,000 and ranks as the nation’s 5th largest commuter railway transit system –would have imposed crippling gridlock on Bay Area roads and bridges. Alternate routes serviced by buses, ferries, and trains operated by other agencies were expecting to be swamped with new commuters.
Not surprisingly, many of us spent the weekend engaged in various forms of risk management as we considered options –both personal and professional –for coping with the strike. (When would be the best time to leave for the office in the morning? How long could the back-up on the Bay Bridge possibly be? etc.)
Some companies were ready to offer employees choices, such as telecommuting or off-hours work –to help ease the burden of commuting through the chaos and to ensure that business could continue with as little disruption as possible.
Well, as luck and the muses of protracted labor negotiations would have it, a tentative contract deal was reached late yesterday afternoon, averting the scheduled strike.
“We are glad to announce we have reached a new tentative agreement with ATU and have avoided a strike that would have disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of BART riders and millions of commuters,” BART Board of Directors President Thomas M. Blalock says in a press release.
I’m glad, too, knowing that for Bay area businesses, the human capital of the supply chain is intact and at work –at least for now, pending ATU endorsement of the new contract agreement.
