BY NANCY COLE
PHILADELPHIA - Well into the third week of a strike by more than 5,300 transit workers, members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 234 continued to make their power felt. City bus, trolley, and subway lines remain shut down in this city of 1.5 million people.

On June 12 hundreds of strikers picketed four Bucks County stations of the R7 regional rail line, disrupting service on that suburban line for the morning rush hour. By 10:00 a.m., the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) had obtained a court injunction ordering the pickets removed.

The picketing also affected trains on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. Workers allowed Amtrak trains to pass, but slowed them down for safety, which delayed 12 trains. By June 15 Amtrak had been granted an injunction barring union pickets, or anyone acting on their behalf, from activities within 50 feet of any track owned or leased by Amtrak.

Also on June 15 SEPTA officials held a news conference to demand that TWU members return to work the next day. Later SEPTA chief negotiator David Cohen declared that there was very little "wiggle room" in the existing contract offer and that the sole motivation for them to return to work before signing a contract would be "so that workers can get paychecks." He added his standard refrain that if the contract proposal were submitted to TWU members, it "would be enthusiastically adopted by the union membership."

Strikers put a lie to that, as they have repeatedly, by mobilizing 600 people in Philadelphia City Council chambers the next day to add their voices to deliberations about a resolution introduced by council president John Street. Weighing in on the side of SEPTA management, Street had proposed seeking a court order to force TWU Local 234 back to work and compel both sides to sit down and negotiate until an agreement was reached. No such back-to-work order has been used against transit workers in the seven strikes they have waged here since 1975. Street, a liberal who has posed as a "friend of labor," had previously taken his distance from Mayor Edward Rendell's openly strikebreaking, pro-SEPTA stance.

By the time of the city council meeting, however, Street had backed down from calling for a back-to-work order. Strikers crowded into city council chambers, chanting steadily for half an hour before council members showed up. At one point Rendell emerged from a meeting on the same floor, and 75 strikers followed him down the hallway and on down the building's spiral staircase with deafening chants of "No contract, no work," and "Ed Rendell, Go to Hell!"

One striker's hand-lettered sign read, "Philly is a labor town, David L. Cohen going down."

Council proceedings were brief since prior agreement had been reached with several council members who opposed the back-to-work portion of the resolution. Afterward, Local 234 president Steve Brookins declared the result a "clear victory" and "something we can live with."

Local TWU officials have advocated binding arbitration since early in the strike, an approach that SEPTA has adamantly rejected.

Meanwhile, SEPTA and the TWU met for two hours June 15.

Nancy Cole is a member of the International Association of Machinists.  
 
 
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