SEIU's rallying cry is the possible elimination of night-owl bus lines. "If the people who rely on these buses lose these buses, they could lose their jobs," bespectacled SEIU organizer Tess Mayer says. She cradles a sign as she looks down an empty Union Avenue. She points to a bus shelter across Fourth Street: "This is the major pick-up place for the downtown night owl."
Due to I-695, the state legislature is looking at major cuts to Seattle and King County's transit budget. If the knife slices as deep as expected, local politicians will have to make some hard choices. Advocates of the night-owl lines see the 2:00 a.m. buses, just like the graveyard-shift employees who rely on them, as being the most vulnerable. (The major routes probably won't be hurt first, even though many of the people who ride those buses have their own cars.)
Primarily employed as janitors, the night-owl riders work all over downtown. They're the people who are emptying the trash cans in your office cubicle and cleaning the public toilets at the Bank of America Building while you're either getting drunk at a Capitol Hill bar or sleeping in your Queen Anne condo. SEIU estimates that 2,000 such souls toil early into the morning every weekday downtown.
The night-owl lines include the 83, 84, and 85 routes, which take folks to areas like Ravenna, Madrona, and West Seattle. Regardless of where these people come from, however, they have two things in common: They all depend on the bus, and they are all people the New Economy has left behind.
When 2:00 a.m. rolls around, a few dozen people materialize like ghosts out of alleys and from behind corporate offices. They drift without pausing to the bus shelters. Within a few minutes, the buses -- the 84, 83, and then the 85 -- lurch to the curb at Fourth and Union.
Mayer and her colleagues cross Seattle's downtown streets without waiting for the walk sign. Each union member has a stack of leaflets, urging people to call their state legislators and ask them to think twice about cutting Metro's budget.
There's barely enough time to hand out leaflets to the night workers. It's no wonder no one ever hears from these people. They disappear as quickly as they appear.
Many of the night workers have already seen the fliers, and they're already filled with fear about what might happen next. Thirty-eight-year-old Doug Armstrong, a custodian at American Building Maintenance, manages to get in a few words before he boards the 83 for the University District. "I would still have a job," he allows, "but I would be stranded for a good two hours, and I got a home to get to. I want the big people to realize that."
It's an important message. Mayer and her union are hoping that it doesn't get drowned out by the other noises of daylight's familiar chaos.
