(The following article by Jere Downs was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on March 8.)
PHILADELPHIA — A week from today, they could shut down the city.
And when city bus, subway and trolley drivers’ contract expires at 12:01 a.m. next Monday, that is what they vowed to do – unless SEPTA alters a plan for employees to make health-care copayments without annual pay increases for two years of a four-year deal.
The debt-ridden transit agency’s proposal is “the worst in the history” of Transport Workers Union Local 234, union president Jean Alexander told 1,800 union members yesterday. The standing-room-only crowd granted Alexander the authority to strike with a roar and a standing ovation in the ballroom of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 hall in South Philadelphia.
“The trend is that employees pay for health care,” Alexander told the crowd. “But Local 234 does not follow the trend. We set trends.”
Heading into the last week of talks before the contract expires, SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said he was confident yesterday that a strike would be averted. The last TWU Local 234 walkout went 40 days in 1998 and shut down city bus and subway service.
“I am optimistic we can come to an agreement,” Maloney said. “Both sides are aware of the challenge in front of us.”
Still, the odds are grim. SEPTA talks with TWU Local 234 have ended in paralyzing strikes for 10 of 15 contract cycles since 1975.
SEPTA’s $70 million projected hole in an $875 million budget is equally forbidding. Despite intense lobbying from SEPTA and its largest union, Gov. Rendell and state legislators have offered little help for fiscal year 2005.
SEPTA’s stark wage and benefits offer pales against the size of the agency’s continuing fiscal crisis. For example, a zero pay increase for 4,700 Local 234 workers, instead of a 3 percent increase, amounts to savings of $7.5 million annually, Alexander said.
That is why, no matter the outcome of the talks, officials at the helm of SEPTA expect to propose fare increases and possible service cuts late this month or early next. As such, SEPTA will not balance its books with this contract.
“The deficit is so large that we still have to conduct the business as though there is going to be a future,” Maloney said.
Workers who turned out in record numbers yesterday for the strike authorization vote were resolute in their determination to preserve lifetime prescription insurance coverage for retirees.SEPTA is now offering three years of post-retirement prescription coverage.
Workers also vowed to fight increased health-care costs.
On average, a Local 234 worker makes $47,840 a year.
SEPTA has proposed no annual raise for the first two years of a four-year contract, followed by a 2 percent increase for each of the two remaining years.
Most Local 234 employees make no monthly payments for health insurance. New employees now pay part of health costs for the first three years on the job.
SEPTA is now demanding all Local 234 workers kick in 20 percent of those costs and pay half of annual health-care cost increases. Workers yesterday estimated those costs at upwards of $50 a week.
“If they stick to these demands, we will definitely be out,” said SEPTA bus mechanic Tommy Gee, 58. “I do not want to go out, but I will.”
Rare and prized benefits such as those are worth fighting for, said Anita Booker, 36.
“Most of us are here for the benefits,” said Booker, a bus driver and mother of two elementary school-age boys. “In these jobs, you work 12 or 15 hours a day. I stay in it for the health care for me and my children.”
A SEPTA City Transit Division strike would stall bus, subway and Market-Frankford El service inside Philadelphia’s city limits. Suburban bus, trolley and Regional Rail services, which are operated by different union workforces, would continue.
Some from the transit union expressed hope that this round of contract talks could break new ground in the difficult history of SEPTA and its largest workforce. Bill James, a veteran bus operator from Midvale, noted that for the first time both SEPTA and Local 234 are led by women.
“Women raise kids. They are the backbone of the family. The don’t let their egos get in the way,” said James, 51. “I am hoping that [SEPTA general manager] Faye Moore and Jean [Alexander] can work this out. Between these two women, maybe we can get a contract without all the bitter hostility of the past.”