SEPTA workers set strike deadline (Mass Transit in Philadelphia).

The transit agency and its largest union are at odds over medical costs in the contract. Members could strike Oct. 31.

Workers who make the city's buses, subways and trolleys run - serving 700,000 riders a day - will strike beginning at 12:01 a.m. Oct. 31 if they cannot reach a contract agreement with SEPTA, union officials announced yesterday.

Members of Transport Workers Union Local 234 - SEPTA's largest union - reacted with cheers and a standing ovation when they learned of the strike deadline yesterday morning at a meeting inside the Sheet Metal Workers union hall on Columbus Boulevard, according to people who attended. More than 1,000 of the Transport Workers Union's 5,000 members turned out for the private session.

Their contract with SEPTA expired on March 15. Terms of that agreement were extended twice. On June 15, neither SEPTA nor the union agreed to a third extension. Since then, union members have been working on a day-to-day basis as contract talks have stalled over health-care issues.

"We've used every possible venue known to man to try to get a deal," Jeff Brooks, president of Local 234, said at a news conference after yesterday's membership meeting. "Unfortunately, SEPTA has taken a position that has been nothing but regressive."

SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney accused the union of choosing a strike date that would "create chaos" for thousands of riders.

"A transit strike at this time of year would create conflict for hundreds of schoolchildren, university students, and for businesses during the critically important holiday-shopping season," Maloney said.

Bus, subway and trolley service would be suspended in the city, along with 19 bus routes in Montgomery and Bucks Counties. A strike would not affect the regional rails that provide transportation between the city and suburbs.

Both sides said the main stumbling block in contract talks has been proposed increases in health-care premiums. Brooks said SEPTA wants the members to pay 20 percent of their health-care premiums. Those members have gone without pay raises in recent years, he has said, in exchange for SEPTA picking up the tab on their health care.

Members are also fighting a SEPTA proposal that future retirees not receive lifetime prescription benefits, as current pensioners do.

Maloney said yesterday that the financially strapped authority, which projected a $92 million deficit this year, had no choice but to seek such concessions.

SEPTA's board, Gov. Rendell and other state elected leaders "are all unanimous that, in this contract, SEPTA employees are going to have to pick up part of their health-care premium," Maloney said.

In June, Rendell secured the shift of $215 million from federal road and bridge projects to SEPTA to help the transit agency cover deficits through December 2006. In its budget, SEPTA called the funding boost a "short-term response to an enduring crisis."

SEPTA has been running deficits for years, something the agency blames on increases in health care and fuel costs and the slow growth in the state's contribution - its largest subsidy.

SEPTA's $952 million budget, which went into effect July 1, is predicated on an increase in contributions to the cost of health care by Local 234's veteran members.

Many carried signs demanding that SEPTA management pay for their health-care insurance. One sign read: "22 months and no pay raise equals strike."

Union member Marshall Kelly of Glenolden, Delaware County, left the meeting ready to strike. Kelly, who has six children between the ages of 11 and 22, has spent the last six months putting money away in anticipation of a walkout.

"Everybody's for the president of our union," the 47-year-old transit mechanic said. "He's waited this long, he's been trying to negotiate, and it's time."

Tony Jackson, 46, who drives buses between Philadelphia and the Plymouth Meeting Mall, where hundreds of city residents are employed, said he regrets that a strike might be necessary.

"What happens to the people out there who don't have cars and won't be able to get to their jobs?" he asked. "They have bills to pay. I feel bad...

"Nobody needs a strike - the people, the passengers. But, at the same time, everybody wants fairness."

Brooks said that Philadelphia residents dependent upon SEPTA should reach out to elected, community and religious leaders for help.

"Get in touch with your legislators, get in touch with your churches," he said. "Essentially, the people who will be hurt the most will be right here in the city."

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Dear Editor:

So let me get this straight.

In this time of high energy prices when people rely heavily on mass transit, the union at SEPTA will literally shut down all mass transit in the City of Philadelphia (and surrounding burbs) so that they may continue to pay NO co-pays and deductibles for their health insurance.

The riders of SEPTA, nearly all of which have to pay for their own health care, will cheer when SEPTA management gets a backbone.

The taxpayers of Pennsylvania, who subsidize SEPTA, will cheer when these quasi public/public union workers get a dose of reality.

Regards,

2banana

I live in the western part of the state -- our local transit system is also threatening a strike...presumably for the same reasons. First of all, don't be fooled -- they put in the media that they are striking because of health care premiums or some such -- but in reality, what they really want is higher wages. These other issues are just smokescreens.

These are some of highest paid operators anywhere -- with overtime, many make around $80,000 per year. Yet,they're squawking because they may have to pay some part of their health insurance. Meanwhile, the taxpayers and those of us who use the system have to pay through the nose to support these overpaid, underworked bums in the style to which they have become accustomed.

I say, dissolve the union, hire replacements (or the workers themselves) at more reasonable wages, give them benefits comparable with industry (which include requirements to cough up some part of their own healthcare premiums) and let these transit authorities function like real businesses do in the real world.

So this tri-annual ritual to extort more money out the taxpayers to pay a bunch of featherbedding freeloaders plays itself out yet again.

Times like these make me very happy that I don't work in Center City anymore.

Amen. I worked in Philadelphia for years and commuted into the city on the regional rail, which has a separate union that is not a part of the city Septa union. The city union went on strike over the issue of mandatory drug tests for their bus drivers. (Turns out, several bus accidents were the results of drugged up bus drivers.)

Since the regional rail was not affected, the city used it to move people around. It was working pretty well, until the terrorists. . .uhhh, I mean the union, decided to start sabotaging the regional rail. They were ripping up tracks, driving cars onto the tracks and other assorted activities that, if done by Al Queda, would get them a one way trip to Gitmo.

But hey, "Union Yes!!!" if legal means don't work, result to crime.

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