Wired-up Commuters Trip Up Transport Strike
Eric Ellis San Francisco

09/13/1997

Suppose they called a transport strike . . . and nobody came. To the office, that is.
That's what's happening in San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley after drivers at the Bay Area Rapid Transit system walked off the job this week for better pay and conditions.

What union organisers forgot is that the BART system networks one of the most "wired" places on the planet.
So instead of being inconvenienced by snarled freeways and the vagaries of a pay dispute, BART's tech-savvy, self-starting commuters stayed home and telecommuted.

One third of the region's three million-strong workforce do some part of their job at home, where installations of Integrated Services Digital Network lines - the telephone connections that facilitate high-speed modem access - is rising three-fold every year.

Telecommuting around the Bay Area is five times the US national average. All of which was a bit lost on the BART strike organisers.

True, the unexpected first day of the strike led to chaos on the freeways around San Francisco, with commuter gridlocks backed up to Silicon Valley. But day two was a different story, and a lesson for strike planners in the fast-emerging high-tech world. The freeways were less congested, the Valley's newspapers full of stories about alternative work practices and bosses urging employees to simply log on from home.

And in the celebrated US entrepreneurial spirit, on the Internet companies selling so-called "anywhere" software saw the BART strike as a business opportunity.

Just as the Gulf War enabled the Pentagon to test its "video hall" weaponry, so too has the BART strike been a chance for Valley bosses to practice what they often preach - telecommuting.

It has also been manna from heaven for San Francisco's colourful mayor, Willie Brown, in negotiations with BART union leaders. While noting that BART drivers were already the best-paid of their trade in the country, city officials said the city had been damaged but not as much as strikers might have hoped.

Big corporations such as Bank of America, the Chevron oil company and Pacific Gas and Electricity all urged certain employees and departments to stay home, at least until the strike is over, and log on from their living rooms. A BA spokesman said the bank was "well-wired" and able to deal with any productivity blips from the strike. "We have telecommuting, flexible schedules and satellite offices," he said.