Vol. 73/No. 37      September 28, 2009

At the high point of the conflict, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1555 members voted two to one against BART bosses’ second contract offer and were poised to go on strike. The walkout would have shut down the four-county mass transit system that carries close to 350,000 passengers a day. The last strike by BART workers was in 1997.

BART bosses on August 13 imposed employment terms and conditions for ATU 1555 that effectively slashed workers’ pay by 7 percent, eliminated payment into a pension plan, and imposed three unpaid furlough days. They also dictated “changes to wasteful work rules.” These terms, BART management wrote, will “remain in effect until a new contract agreement is reached.”

In response, the ATU set a strike deadline of 12:01 a.m., August 17. BART employees represented by the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who had earlier voted to ratify new contracts, pledged to honor ATU picket lines.

BART bosses, aided by editorial writers for the major newspapers in the Bay Area and others in the bourgeois media, whipped up a campaign to put pressure on the workers and their union. The San Francisco Chronicle editorialized August 15 against the “holdout union” and wrote that the “workers’ stubborn demand to preserve the deluxe features and inefficiencies in their contract suggest an obliviousness to the lives and paychecks of riders on the trains they operate.

“The union will gain no sympathy—and, we trust, no concessions from management—if its members choose to strike.” A strike will create “havoc” and “chaos,” the paper warned. It demanded that the ATU “call off its dangerous gamble.”

Chronicle writer Carla Marinucci penned an article headlined “Public sentiment running high against labor action” in the same issue. Marinucci whipped up middle-class venom against members of the ATU at the prospect of a BART strike “in such dire economic times.” She offered “a sampling of the anti-strike sentiment from readers.” One urged BART riders to “confront the workers and tell them your opinion.” Another threatened, “I think our soldiers in Iraq might be safer next week than picketing BART workers.”

During the final hours of negotiations August 16, BART bosses backed off their demand for six unpaid furlough days in the first two years of the contract.

Following the vote, management asserted that it had won changes in pay, benefits, and work rules that will save BART $38 million over the next four years. Wages will remain frozen for at least three years.
 
 
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