SPOKES

Regular Collum by Fur

Mercury Rising #2, November 1991

As the attorney at Sonnenschein pressed the USDC filing into my hand at 4:57 P.M. one day last week, I was concerned about safety. He looked me in the eye and sheepishly said, I know . I interpreted this to mean that he was sorry he was compelling me to blast uptown like a 3-minute court-seeking missile. I'm sure he understood that if I didn't blow red lights and jam my highest gear as hard as my legs could pump, I would fail.

Variations on this scene are repeated ever day in San Francisco. Our ability to cut traffic like butter is the foundation of the biking industry. Often clients don't seem to realize what they're demanding of fellow human beings for paltry sums of money. Some who do a large volume of business, play the companies off one another to get our services for wildly reduced rates. Riding a bike in SF traffic is fairly dangerous, and the terms of our employment magnify the danger.

As the insurance crisis heats up, companies are making safety a priority. But are managers ready to address economic issues that underlie our safety problems?

In many respects, our job is a sport. Each game is 8 to 10 hours long, and we ply the huge playing field 40 to 50 hours per week racking up a many points (dollars) as we can. Longterm strategy dictates that we show up every day and maintain some semblance of a gung-ho attitude so our dispatchers will feed" us like the gravy dogs we are (just as other athletes try to convince coaches to maximize their playing time). Many of us love the game aspect of messenging. It’s a drag when we're losing, but on those days when we can win more than a hundred bucks, we go home not just exhausted but satisfied.

Still, if we are to continue chasing down our pay all over town dollar-by-dollar, tag, prices and commission rates are a safety issue!

Consider the bitter irony visited upon Executive messengers when their company announced the new Safety Bonus Program. The company that had 8 months earlier taken 4% of the messengers’ earnings per tag out of their wallets is now running a game within a game wherein avoidance of getting hurt is rewarded by points which purchase quality merchandise from a tacky catalog. If anybody on a team is injured, apparently regardless of fault, the entire team loses points (I've heard that the two bike dispatch boards are separate teams.)

I believe Exec’s management is committed to making progress on safety. 939 Harrison looks like some kind of safety camp these days, with xeroxed articles at the dispatch windows, the big sign announcing how many days the company has operated without an injury, and mandatory safety meetings featuring a company-produced video. And they're providing safety lights (see cover article). They're throwing significant, resources into this thing. Joe Kent has even promised that when accident losses come down, commissions will go back up.

I'm wondering how that cart’s going to pull that horse up that hill. I think fair pay is a prerequisite for safe riding.

Meanwhile, my friends drag ass downtown to face another day as high-speed traffic fodder. Combine the commission cut with raging inflation, and they've got to do at least six or eight percent more work than they did last year for the same purchasing power. If they can just keep it together they'll win valuable prizes.

And the radio crackles, How soon’re ya gonna be into 799 Market? They're screaming for that one!

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com