Bike Messengers Struggle for Union

Since 1997, bike messengers in San Francisco have become increasingly activist in response to stagnant income and more difficult working conditions. While it is too early to tell how effective our efforts have been, so far the signs look good.

In 1990 we started the San Francisco Bike Messenger Association (SFBMA). For several years the group was mainly a social club, but in 1996 we organized the Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC). That CMWC was the first ever on US soil, and many people in and out of the messenger community had doubts as to our ability to pull it off. Not only did we succeed but most participants considered the 1996 CMWC in San Francisco to be the best ever. In addition the CMWC showed messengers in San Francisco that European and other North American messengers made far more money at their jobs than we did. Accordingly in the spring of 1997 we began to change the SFBMA into an activist organization to advance our interests on the job.

In May 1998, we entered into a working agreement with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) to unionize San Francisco's messenger industry. Not only did this mean that we would try to get bike messengers into the ILWU, it also meant that we would try to form alliances with driving messengers, dispatchers and office workers throughout the industry in the Bay Area. Unlike previous attempts to unionize messengers, we would try to organize all companies in the local industry.

Some of us had concerns about including drivers in the union. Many bike messengers have strong attitudes against the Auto(mobile)cracy and were hesitant about welcoming them. However, we need to be inclusive if we're to have a real union.

An understanding of the messenger industry actually shows that bringing in drivers offers a potential for advancing the Velorution. With union power, bike messengers can continue to do more deliveries into areas farther away from our customary territory of northeastern San Francisco. Already bike messengers go as far as the Marin Headlands, San Jose, and Concord. If drivers can then expand their territory farther, then commercial use of autos may replace private car use in rural areas while commercial bike use replaces commercial motor vehicles in the suburbs. In other words, strengthening bike messenger territory in metropolitan zones can free commercial drivers to replace private auto use in the countryside.

Since allying ourselves with the ILWU, we've made greater advances toward unionizing our industry than ever before. On March 14th, bike messengers at the SF branch of Dispatch Management Service (DMS) struck to reinstate a messenger dismissed for union activity. In two hours DMS managers caved in and rehired the biker. On April 15, messengers at three companies struck and about half of the City's 300 bike messengers struck briefly at the lunch hour. On June 25th, messengers and office staff at Lightning Express struck, and closed their service for the last two hours of the day.

On June 1st, we won a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) vote to authorize ILWU Local 6 as the union representing messengers at Ultra Ex Delivery, a major messenger service in San Francisco. (Note: An NLRB election is a vote supervised by the federal government to determine if a union is to represent the workforce at a particular workplace. The vote at Ultra was 27 to 15 in favor of the union.) The win at Ultra was important not only because it was our first NLRB election test, it was greatly symbolic because Ultra Bike Messengers are famed for having the largest territory of any bike crew in the Bay Area and for having a large group of "veteran" messengers (bikers with over 10 years experience).

These struggles and victories have given us a momentum that has inspired many who were once "fence sitters" or even "naysayers." Our effort still has a long way to go but the progress we've made is unprecedented in messenger history.

But getting economic power in our industry will be only one step. We know that improving our working conditions will require a voice in the political process as well as in our business. Issues like bike lanes, road paving, public transit, traffic calming, and closing Market Street to private auto use will be solved by pressuring the City government not our employers.

-Howard Williams

San Francisco Bike Messenger Association, P.O. Box 640251, San Francisco, CA 94164-0251, Email: magpie@echo.com, http://www.messengers.org/sfbma/.

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