6:31 PM: Negotiators for BART and its labor unions are still bargaining tonight but a union leader warned that employees will go on strike at midnight unless there’s significant movement in the next few hours.
Speaking to reporters outside the Caltrans building in downtown Oakland, where BART management is meeting with union leaders, Service Employees International Union Local 1021 Executive Director Pete Castelli said, “We’re ready to bargain” but union leaders remain unhappy with a last, best and final offer management presented on Sunday.
The offer includes a 12 percent wage increase over four years, retroactive to July 5, plus a bonus if BART exceeds its ridership goals, but also requires employees to make a 4 percent pension contribution and a 9.5 percent contribution to their health benefits, according to BART officials.
BART has said the union has two weeks from Sunday to accept its offer.
Castelli said it was “very strange and very curious” to make the offer and then “walk away from it” without further discussion.
“That’s known as jamming the other side,” Castelli said.
He advised BART riders to “prepare for alternative transportation” to get to work on Tuesday because he thinks a strike is likely “unless something breaks and there’s a Hail Mary.”
BART Board President Tom Radulovich, who spoke to reporters shortly before Castelli did, said management’s offer represents “the outer limit” of what the transit agency can offer its workers.
Radulovich said people who have phoned BART directors about the negotiations are urging them by a three-to-one margin to “hold the line and be firm” with the unions.
Although management said it has made its final offer to employees, Radulovich said management is willing to talk to union leaders about ways to reach an agreement on the numbers involved in a potential deal.
He said “the money won’t change but there might be another way” to reach an agreement based on input from the unions.
Radulovich said, “We understand the anxiety everyone faces” about the threat of a BART strike but he said management will be at the bargaining table “all night tonight and as long as it takes.”
The contract talks involve SEIU Local 1021, which represents 1,430 mechanics, custodians and clerical workers, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, which represents 945 station agents, train operators and clerical
workers.
Even though the unions are threatening to go on strike, Castelli said, “We remain very close to a deal and we’re ready to bargain.”
But he said if a strike happens “it would lie clearly at the foot of BART directors” for not being more directly involved in negotiations and not being more flexible.
Jeff Shuttleworth, Bay City News
5:51 PM: A union leader warned BART riders this afternoon that employees will go on strike at midnight unless there is a dramatic breakthrough in contract talks tonight.
Pete Castelli, the executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, said “We’re heading for a strike at midnight unless something breaks and there’s a Hail Mary.”
Speaking to reporters outside the Caltrans building in Oakland, where BART management is meeting with union negotiators, Castelli advised commuters to “prepare for alternative transportation” to get to work on Tuesday in case an agreement isn’t reached tonight.
BART board president Tom Radulovich said a last, best and final offer presented by management on Sunday represents the “outer limit” of what the transit agency can offer its workers.
The offer includes a 3 percent raise for each of the contract’s four years, retroactive to July 5, but also requires employees to make a 4 percent pension contribution and a 9.5 percent contribution to their health benefits, according to BART officials.
BART has said the union has two weeks from Sunday to accept its offer.
