Members of Transport Workers Local Union 234, SEPTA’s largest, voted on Sunday to authorize leaders to call a strike against the transit agency, less than two weeks before the local’s current contract expires and with little apparent progress in talks.
A strike authorization does not mean the roughly 5,000-member union would immediately walk off the job. Negotiations would likely continue, but Local 234 President Brian Pollitt and his team now have the leverage of a threatened job action in their pockets.
The vote came as SEPTA faces a fiscal crisis that could bring service cuts and a second fare increase soon, with no action in Harrisburg on state aid for public transportation systems around the state. In addition, CEO and General Manager Leslie S. Richards abruptly announced Thursday she would be leaving Nov. 29, with no public explanation for her departure.
Local 234 represents bus, subway and trolley, and subway operators, mechanics, cashiers, maintenance people and custodians, primarily in the city.
They have been working on a one-year contract that expires at 11:59 p.m., Nov. 7, two days after the election. It raised wages 7% across the board and provided a $3,000 signing bonus to each Local 234 member.
In bulletins posted to the union’s website, Local 234 said SEPTA wants members to accept a one-year contract with no raises even as the cost of living rises. The two sides have met several times. According to the union, SEPTA’s team has been citing its financial insecurity as a reason not to increase wages.
“SEPTA might be telling us to drop dead, but that does not mean we are just going to roll over and die,” the union said in its newsletter on Oct. 17.
The two groups have been allies in mobilizing political support for more transit funding this fall.
Local 234 also says that SEPTA has not made enough progress in better protecting its members from violence and disorder, despite a promise last year to work on improvements.
The union and SEPTA reached agreement on Oct. 27 last year, avoiding a strike that would have crippled the region.
Hanging over the final hours of talks was the killing of Bernard N. Gribben, a veteran Route 23 bus operator, shot to death a day earlier in Germantown by a passenger who was exiting through the front door, police said.
The union had pressed for improvements in safety for its members and the public amid a rash of crime and antisocial behavior on the transit system — as well as a big increase in assaults on bus operators during and after the pandemic shutdowns.
Addressing personal safety was an animating issue for Local 234 in last year’s negotiations, as much as or more than winning economic gains. The agreement did not include any language on safety but in a side letter, SEPTA pledged to keep working on it.
The local also represents 183 maintenance workers and 206 bus operators in the suburbs, but contracts in those divisions are set to expire later in November.
SEPTA is known as one of the most strike-prone large transit systems in the country. Since 1975, at least 11 unions have walked off the job.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
