Federal mediator George Cohen announced at a press conference Wednesday night that trains will continue to run Thursday. The late-night announcement came during the fifth meeting in the past week at which the threat of a strike loomed into the late evening hours.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said that she could not release details from Wednesday’s negotiations because of a gag order intended to subdue public pressure on the parties.

BART workers went on strike for four days in July, with negotiations resulting in a temporary agreement. That agreement was extended for two months on Aug. 11 due to a court-ordered cooling-off period requested by Gov. Jerry Brown. The cooling off period ended Oct. 10, setting off a series of late-night meetings between BART management and union negotiators in the past week.

In the past, contention between BART management and unions has focused on pay increases. On Sunday, BART General Manager Grace Crunican announced BART management’s “last, best and final offer” — a 12 percent raise over four years. Nonmanagement BART employees earned an average of $76,500 in gross pay last year.

Unions said a previous offer from BART to increase pay by 10 percent over four years had been insufficient. Before Oct. 10, the two sides had come to a tentative agreement for employees to be reimbursed 72 cents for every $1 they contribute toward their pensions.

“Like I say every morning, I feel good,” Antonette Bryant, president of ATU 1555, one of the unions representing BART employees, told the San Jose Mercury News. “The unions are trying to get a deal done. We’re not trying to disrupt service.”

Another public transportation crisis was temporarily averted Wednesday evening, as Brown appointed a board to investigate a contract dispute between AC Transit and one of its unions, prohibiting a strike or lockout for up to seven days.

If no agreement is reached in the next week, Brown could ask a judge to ban a strike or a lockdown for two months. AC Transit union workers had posted a 72-hour notice to strike starting Thursday.

Polls show most Bay Area residents support BART management. According to an Oct. 10 KPIX 5/SurveyUSA poll of Bay Area adults, 76 percent said they opposed BART workers going on strike.

Juan Fermin, a student at Berkeley City College, said that in the event of a strike, he would rely on AC Transit for his commute from Richmond.

“I practically have to ride BART every day,” Fermin said. “It’s my way to get back home as well.”

Other BART riders expressed concern that another BART strike would increase traffic and strain other forms of public transit throughout the Bay Area.

“It would be a really big inconvenience,” said Elizabeth Allum, who came from Ohio and used BART to visit her sister in Berkeley. “I think traffic would go up, I bet accidents would go up — just kind of chaos.”

Contact Chris Yoder at cyoder@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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Benny Grush/Staff

Although BART management and labor unions failed to reach an agreement Thursday night, union leadership agreed to extend talks through the weekend, narrowly averting what would have been this year’s second BART strike.

In early August, San Francisco County Superior Court granted Gov. Jerry Brown’s request for a 60-day “cooling-off” period that barred BART employees from striking. This expired at the end of Thursday. If the two sides had failed to reach an agreement by then, BART employees could have gone on strike Friday, disrupting more than 400,000 daily commuters.

Talks between BART and labor unions are set to resume at 10 a.m. Friday. If an agreement is not reached this weekend, the unions could strike as early as Monday.

Negotiations earlier this week were stalled by various stumbling blocks as the parties sought to come to a consensus and avoid a repeat of the summer’s BART strike, which lasted from July 1 to 5.

On Tuesday night, unions and BART management were “very close” to an agreement, according to Des Patten, a spokesperson from Service Employees International Union Local 1021. However, negotiations fell through after BART management said there had been a miscommunication.

“That was an unfortunate situation,” Patten said. “We just told them, ‘You were at this point, and that’s where we expected you to be’ and what we were ready to talk about.”

One of the main points of contention during recent negotiations was an offer from BART to increase pay by 10 percent over four years, which unions said was insufficient.

“There’s no such thing as a 10 percent raise, because you first subtract the amount of money that will be used to pay for the pension, and then you subtract the amount that will be paid for medical,” Patten said. The service employees union also made “significant changes” to its wage offer during negotiations, he added.

On Thursday afternoon, BART spokesperson Jim Allison said BART management planned to present a new offer that was “greater than that 10 percent over four years.”

Previously, the two sides unofficially agreed on a plan to reimburse employees 72 cents for every $1 they contribute toward their pensions. The unions and BART management entered Thursday’s negotiations with this agreement tentatively in place, Allison said.

Another major issue discussed this week was safety measures in the workplace for BART employees, such as insufficient lighting and overgrown brush along tracks.

“Some areas of the tunnels are extremely dark, and you can’t see very well — it’s a danger for employees,” Patten said. “If something goes wrong and (patrons) have to evacuate the train, it’s very dark, and people could stumble and fall.”

Throughout this week, the two sides made progress on smaller, nonmonetary issues, including work regulations, according to Patten.

News editor Megan Messerly contributed to this report.

Contact Jessie Lau at jlau@dailycal.org.

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Yi Zhong/Staff

It’s 8 p.m. Sunday night, June 30, 2013.

We just found out that the BART negotiators had no further proposals to present.

Paper in hand, we did the math. The last offer they left on the table meant a cut of more than 12 percent in take pay per year — times four years. This is the offer that we faced after four years of zero wage increases, four years of BART budget surpluses and an increase in ridership of more than 11 percent.

On June 25, the BART unions voted by an overwhelming 98.6 percent to authorize a strike under these conditions.

What were we to do? In addition to the economics, the district rejected the union’s safety proposals (which included safety lighting and reopening the public restrooms in the underground stations), and they also left their draconian management rights proposals on the table (such as invasive sick-leave procedures and unilateral changes to job descriptions).

These negotiations weren’t supposed to happen this way. We did everything that we could to prevent a strike. We got started with the process early. Our researchers began in October 2012 — the bargaining team, back in December. Despite our best efforts, the district stonewalled us and left us with only seven weeks to bargain the contract.

BART’s relationship with its unions has always been contentious. Sixteen years ago, when I began working at BART, I was told, firstly, to save my money, because we were going on strike (the 1997 strike). Then, I was told to keep in mind that the district (management) could never be trusted.

I was advised about how to perform my job within the framework of the BART system. How to get things done by calling on another Union Brother or Sister. They would be the ones to advise me about how to access the stations after dark, how to keep safe (by riding in the first transit vehicle at night), where to park my car, where to get a meal at 2 a.m., which high-rail vehicles I should request in order to perform preventive maintenance safely inside the transbay tube, etc. Most importantly, I was warned to never, never, ever trust that management would be there for me if I got into any trouble.

The BART transit system is the ultimate experiment in collaboration. Every station, every shop and jurisdiction operates as a separate entity and has its own flavor. The unions are the glue that connects this system. Going through the recent media, there is an underlying misconception that the BART system is a well-tuned, high-tech, well-managed transit system. BART promotes a vision that it has a clear understanding of how to get things accomplished, that all systems are lined up for productivity — all they really need is a flexible work force.

In my 25 years prior to coming to BART, I’ve never seen an organization with a more “exactly incompetent” managerial staff. The truth is that they rely heavily on manual procedures, institutional history and the discretionary passion of individual workers. So much of the system has never been documented. Contractors come and go without a trace, leaving regular workers to do forensics and reverse engineering in order to keep the system going.

Back to negotiations. The last few months have been an exercise in futility. This dispute is not about economics; it’s about breaking the unions. The new general manager and the negotiator that she hired for $400,000 has a history in transit labor relations that does not bode well for the unions.

Still, there is purity in the way that they are coming at us. They simply do not care. Our strength is our ability to withhold labor, so they respond by creating an untenable situation,and forcing us out on strike. They know that a successful strike takes planning and organization,and that due to the steady decline of organized labor in the private sector, the pressure will be heavily upon the unions.

The theory is this: If we go out on strike, we will lose money. BART will continue to beat us up in the press in order to break our resolve. When the workers come back, they will be angry.  It is management’s plan that that anger should be directed toward the union. To bolster the plan, they will blatantly violate the contract. They will retaliate and disrespect any union leader who showed any kind of backbone during the strike. They will resolve issues only with sycophants and toadies and will seek to exhaust the union’s resources by tying it up in grievances, arbitrations and court actions.

Brothers and sisters, on midnight of June 30, we, the BART workers, were a force to reckon with. We rose up in defense of all working people against capitalism. As the strongest, most powerful transit union in the United States, on Independence Day of 2013, we had our boot on the neck of the dragon, but we didn’t finish the job. For various reasons (to be discussed over a beer later), we let up.

The BART unions still do not have a contract; we have another deadline of midnight, August 4, and recent history is repeating itself. If and when we go out on strike again, it has to be different. Working people and youth are under attack everywhere. We need to join forces to protect and improve the standard of living for all working people in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Please join the BART unions and the ILWU for All Out August 1 in Oakland for a labor solidarity rally to stop attacks on BART transit workers and all employer attacks on unions.

Rhea Davis is a 16-year BART electronic technician and the BART chapter vice president of SEIU 1021.

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