San Francisco Bart transit workers enter fourth day of strike

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/21/san-francisco-bart-strike-fourth-day

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A transit strike has hit commuters in the San Francisco bay area for a fourth day, causing widespread disruption, delay and recrimination.

There were gridlocked roads and long queues for buses and ferries before dawn on Monday, and worse was feared for the evening rush hour, as Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) system workers continued a strike which began last Friday.

Managers and union leaders were in contact over the weekend but no fresh talks were planned following last week's collapse in mediation.

The death of two workers in an accident on Saturday – they were hit by a computer-controlled train while inspecting a section of track near Walnut Creek – had no immediate effect on the walkout. The train was carrying a handful of Bart employees on what was described as a routine maintenance trip. The investigation is expected to take weeks, possibly months.

Sympathy for the families of the two men, who were not officially named, gave way on Monday to renewed criticism of managers and union leaders for paralysing the US's fifth-largest commuter rail system, which has an average weekday ridership of 400,000.

It is the second strike in four months, following a four-day stoppage in July, which was estimated to have cost $73m a day.

By 6am, traffic leading to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was already snarled for miles and there were long queues for buses and ferries. Commuters said the chaos appeared worse than Friday, when many people stayed home.

"This is extremely stressful – it's horrible," Anthony Carral of Brentwood, a legal assistant in San Francisco, told AP. "They left us in limbo all week. Some people are losing jobs over this."

Jamaudra Shepherd of Oakland caught an early bus to San Francisco near the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. "It's just really tedious," she said. "I have to leave 90 minutes early, and I get home an hour later. I'm really over it." She added: "You can't tell your landlord you're going to be late with the rent because of it. They're not cutting the public any slack."

Unions and managers blamed each other after six months of on-and-off negotiations came agonisingly close to a collective bargaining agreement last week only to collapse over work rule changes.

About a quarter of Bart's annual $1.6bn budget is spent on labour. Managers are seeking savings from workers to partly fund new railway cars and a new train control centre and accuse union leaders of blocking necessary improvements to efficiency.

Leaders of Employees International Union Local 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 said they had compromised on health benefits, pension contributions and other issues, and offered to put unresolved disputes to an arbitrator, but that managers proved intransigent.

Analysts warned that voters may punish both sides by rejecting the agency's bid for higher taxes to fund a systems upgrade, and by approving a ballot initiative to curb public sector pension benefits.

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