Strike looms as SEPTA talks fail to resolve issues

Transportation will probably not be affected today, officials said. Although Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority buses, subways and trolleys are expected to run on schedule today, the threat of a strike by the agency's union as early as tomorrow still looms large, with neither side willing to budge in the bitter contract negotiations. The Transport Workers Union Local 234 presented SEPTA with its latest contract proposal at about 8 p.m. last night. The brief meeting was the first contact between the two groups since union negotiators walked out of the downtown hotel where they had been negotiating almost 24 hours earlier. Although union officials made no formal pledge not to strike, union spokesperson Bruce Bodner said as long as the informal talks continue until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. as expected, service will continue today. Bodner did reiterate the union's earlier pledge that union workers would not strand SEPTA riders by beginning a strike midday. Contract negotiations had continued virtually around-the-clock since midnight Saturday, when union representatives agreed to extend their talks beyond the March 15 deadline. A strike by the 5,600-member union would shut down most buses, trolleys and subways, leaving the transit system's 450,000 weekday passenger searching for other ways to get around the city. SEPTA and TWU yesterday continued to publicly criticize each other's bargaining strategies. SEPTA chief strategist David L. Cohen told reporters at the Franklin Wyndham Plaza Hotel that SEPTA had laid out a framework within which any agreement must fall during earlier, informal talks with TWU. "The union knows precisely what it needs to do to get an agreement," said Cohen, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell's former chief of staff who is now chairperson of the law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews and Ingersoll. "The union needs to take a good hard look at the framework." Bodner said the latest union proposal works within SEPTA's "basic frame of reference." But Bodner said earlier yesterday that SEPTA was negotiating in bad faith by "insisting that [their] solution was the only solution." He added that "the union has already gone as far as it can go" in making concessions. Likewise, Cohen said SEPTA's proposal is "cemented to the table." Earlier in the week, Cohen said the negotiations, which have been ongoing since late December, focus on the issues of work rules, employee absenteeism, SEPTA's ability to sustain itself financially, workers' compensation and health benefits. The current negotiations began in reaction to an 85-page contract SEPTA proposed in late December, which left the union claiming management would have too much power. At the time, the union countered with a 15-page list of contract proposals, which included changing the company's pensions system to allow employees to retire. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Ben Geldon contributed to this article.