Late Sunday evening, BART management asked Governor Jerry Brown to step in to stop a strike from happening by its employee unions. He did, and the unions are pissed.
Brown appointed a three-person "board of inquiry," at the request of BART negotiators, in order to investigate the reasons behind the stalled negotiations. In a letter issued last night, Brown said he wanted the strike delayed at least another week because it "will significantly disrupt public transportation services and will endanger the public's health, safety and welfare."
This board will be composing a public report for the governor in the next seven days, outlining the issues behind the stalled talks. Then, next weekend, if no agreement has been reached, Brown will decide whether to impose a 60-day cooling-off period, which will mean the next strike threat won't come until October.
At issue, primarily, is the fact that BART management wants to provide smaller pay increases than the unions want over the next four years, and for employees to start paying into pensions and health care -- a change that the unions say will result in a net pay decrease for many of the lower paid employees.
The unions say that BART negotiators have been bargaining in bad faith, and this act of getting the governor to intervene is just another example of that.
Tom Radulovich, a 16-year vet of the BART board, said last night, "BART labor negotiations are always contentious. But it gets frustrating to have the best wage increases and benefits in the transit industry and be told we're union busting."
