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SEPTA strike evening update, Day Five: No deal, and the Gov gives up
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Sandy Smith
Add to the ranks of Pennsylvanians frustrated with Transport Workers Union Local 234 Gov. Edward G. Rendell.
After finding out that instead of following through on what he understood was a handshake agreement with U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), the union instead sent a counteroffer to SEPTA with new demands thrown in, an irate Governor announced at a press conference this evening that he was removing himself as an intermediary in the negotiations between the transit authority and its largest union.
"I have a state to run," he said.
Rendell also called on the union to let its members vote directly on SEPTA's latest offer by Monday or else lose $7 million in state funding to help pay for a new contract.
The new demands the union sent SEPTA include a call for an independent audit of the agency's pension plan and a clause reopening the medical plan section if Congress should approve a better public health insurance plan. A TWU national spokesman said the counteroffer was to have been sent to SEPTA via Brady this afternoon, but as of the 6 p.m. news conference, no proposal had actually been sent.
Rendell called the failure to reach an agreement today "nuts," adding that he had "never seen anything like it in my 32 years in government."
Rendell also criticized radio and TV ads being run by the TWU in which the union accuses SEPTA management of treating employees like "second-class citizens" and alleges that management would discriminate against women and minorities in assigning jobs without the seniority provisions currently in the contract. Rendell called the ads "absolute insanity." (This correspondent also criticized the union's rhetoric in an open letter to TWU President Willie Brown Oct. 30.)
For up-to-the-second information on those SEPTA services that are operating, follow SEPTA on Twitter. This article contains basic information about services that are runnning and those that are idle; for more details about service disruptions, visit the SEPTA Web site.
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- Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)
- Port Authority Transit Corporation (Southern New Jersey Rapid Transit)
- New Jersey Transit Corporation (Statewide transit in New Jersey)
- Delaware Transit Corporation (DART First State)
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