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As Bay Area Strike Idles Trains, Commuters Scramble
SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Bay Area’s commuter train service was shut down by a strike on Monday, forcing hundreds of thousands of people onto overcrowded roads, bridges, buses and ferries. The dispute appeared headed into a second day as negotiations between the Bay Area Rapid Transit System and two of its largest unions broke down. No new talks were scheduled.
Some 2,400 employees of the commuter railroad, known as BART — which is the nation’s fifth-largest, used by more than 400,000 riders daily — went on strike after their four-year contract expired Sunday night. BART’s management and the two unions, representing train operators, station agents, maintenance and other workers, failed to reach an agreement on wages and benefits.
The labor organizations, the Service Employees International Union and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which were demanding a 5 percent raise in each of the next three years, rejected management’s offer of 2 percent annual increases over the next four years. Management is also pressing workers to start making contributions to their state pension plans and to increase their health insurance payments from the current level of $92 a month.
“We’ve heard nothing from them today,” said Josie Mooney, a negotiator for the Service Employees International Union, adding that she did not know when talks would resume.
The strike caught Samantha Fox by surprise. Ms. Fox, 29, had dressed up in a button-down shirt and yellow slacks for a job interview at Crate & Barrel in San Francisco only to find the MacArthur BART station closed. “I’m frustrated because I hadn’t heard anything about this strike,” she said.
Ms. Fox knew a bus route she could take. But the walk from the bus station to the interview was longer than the walk from the BART station would have been. “It’s hot out, and I don’t want to get my nice clothes sweaty before my interview,” she said.
Describing management’s offer on wages as “really inferior,” Ms. Mooney said members deserved raises after accepting a wage freeze in contract negotiations during the economic crisis in 2009. “This union is responsive to employers when there are bad times on the commitment that when times are good, workers’ wages and conditions will be restored,” she said.
Jim Allison, a spokesman for BART, said the transit system was asking its unionized workers to simply accept the kind of concessions that other public employees had made.
“BART employees currently do not contribute anything toward their pension,” he said. “The BART district pays for both the employer’s share and the employee’s share, which is very unusual in the state of California.”
According to BART, train operators and station agents earn on average $60,000 in annual salary and more than $11,000 in overtime.
With daily ridership expected to grow to 750,000 over the next decade, BART needs to upgrade its 40-year-old system, Mr. Allison said.
The unions are asking for improvements to workers’ safety, including better lighting in stations and on tracks.
BART ran chartered buses out of some stations. Ferries between Oakland and San Francisco swelled with passengers. The morning commute was not paralyzed as some had feared, perhaps because many commuters had made alternative arrangements.
But Haruna Matsuda, 35, did not watch the news while dressing for her waitressing job in downtown San Francisco. “I came here to get on BART, and the whole place is empty,” she said at the MacArthur station. “Oh, my God, how am I supposed to get to work?”
Malia Wollan contributed reporting from Oakland, Calif.
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