by mjw on 10/14/13, 8:02 PM
The coloured dots are cute and all, but if the goal is to make visually apparent the relationship between salary and union membership, some more traditional visualisations might have made this clearer. For example boxplots broken down by union.
by deeths on 10/14/13, 7:50 PM
Very cool visualization.
One of the big points of confusion I've had in understanding the press around this has been trying to rationalize the differences between the (union) statements about low base salaries against the (management) statements about high total costs per employee. This provides some interesting context about how those numbers can be so different.
1) There's only one union employee with a base salary (graph union vs base pay) over $100k, and only 3 non-computer/telco union jobs with a salary above $90k.
2) There are a few folks with huge overtime (earning up to an additional 1.5x their salary in overtime). A quarter of the union employees are adding over 20% to their salary from overtime. Nearly 7% are adding over 50%. A total of 21 people are making more from OT than base pay. The big overtime users are mostly making between $50k and 65k a year in base salary, with a few making $80k+.
3) As a side-note: The biggest overtime payments go mostly to senior operations foreworkers (usually making $80k+) and train operators (usually making $60-75k). As a percentage of salary, those two titles are some of the leaders, but also joined by system service workers (described on several sites as basically a janitor and making $50-60k).
by wjnc on 10/14/13, 7:54 PM
Astonishing for me from a cross cultural perspective.
-Here in the Netherlands mechanics would never come as close to senior management as at BART. The highest ranking mechanics / technical staff are in the $/2 range of senior management? I would venture the same ratio would be >10 here.
-You can actually get 100K$ in overtime! Too bad their hours aren't included.
-And: all salaries are public including names. No privacy there.
-I don't see much evidence of explicit union favouratism? Much of the management is non-represented, but white collar versus blue collar could account for that?
by mrmaddog on 10/14/13, 8:42 PM
I like how you can click on a person's representative dot and follow them through the different sorting metrics. One point stood out to me: how does Assistant Treasurer Ms. Collier get $289,534 in "other" pay? The raw data provided didn't offer any details, and
http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2012 classifies "Other" as lump sum payouts for vacation, sick-leave, bonuses and comp-time. How does the assistant treasurer get such a high bonus? (For reference, one other assistant treasurer was included in the data, and made a base of 150k (vs Ms Collier's $30K), but only 6k in "other" payment).
Visualizations make it very easy to spot outliers like this.
by digikata on 10/14/13, 8:35 PM
I don't think I'd feel comfortable if someone posted my name, title, and salary along with everyone I worked with to a public website.
by rmc on 10/14/13, 8:28 PM
USA is weird. How come you can get this data on people's personal lives? Why do you not have privacy laws?
by javajosh on 10/14/13, 10:01 PM
Wow - I'm a lot less interested in the BART strike and more inspired about the idea that news stories and their source data will be published as
github projects. This is an amazing concept. I can fork this "story" and edit it to my liking, add different analyses, commentary, etc. I could combine the data with other data - all without bothering the author. I can also verify the data, amend it, etc (which is a little risky).
But overall, the idea of an interactive news story in git is one of the best things I've seen so far this decade.
by guserson on 10/14/13, 8:35 PM
This is not a good visualization. It's actually harder to find the information one might be interested in and making comparisons is not easy or really possible.
by smtddr on 10/14/13, 8:22 PM
Hey, so... this is a sorta good time to ask. I assume this website's visualization was meant to spark some discussion. Do people on HN support/condemn the BART strike(s)? I've always been under the impression that the huge salaries being reported were some how an exaggeration. Because of this, I support the BART strike(s)... but perhaps my impression is wrong. Also, the strike doesn't impact me nearly as much as some other people. git pull/commit/push works just as good at home as in the office; thus I avoid dealing with the
insane traffic from EastBay to San Francisco that is made even more insane by BART shutting down. At the same time, I don't think anyone wants disgruntled BART employees doing anything dangerous so paying them to have a "comfortable" life is also a good idea.
Basically, I want to know if BART employees are being overpaid for what they do. This is probably more of an opinion thing than any kind of fact one way or another.
I don't wanna go into some flamewar or anything....
by wil421 on 10/14/13, 8:55 PM
I think I am in the wrong profession...perhaps one with a Union can help increase my salary/benefits.
by MrZongle2 on 10/14/13, 9:24 PM
Lesson I learned from this chart: if I want to earn more as a BART employee, don't join a union.
by thisispete on 10/14/13, 9:00 PM
wowsa. how does that 1 station agent make 42k more than any other?