Opinion

BART settlement brings relief

Members of SEIU leave after BART management and its unions have announced a tentative agreement in their labor negotiations on Monday night, October 21, 2013, in Oakland, Calif., and an end to the 4-day labor strike. less Members of SEIU leave after BART management and its unions have announced a tentative agreement in their labor negotiations on Monday night, October 21, 2013, in Oakland, Calif., and an end to the 4-day labor ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close BART settlement brings relief 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

For many very frustrated, very angry Bay Area residents, the only thing that mattered was the bottom line of Monday night's announcement of a tentative deal: BART trains will begin to roll again, bringing relief to a region that is, by design, dependent on mass transit.

Thus ended a second short but maddening and eminently avoidable strike by BART workers. The grounds for the strike were so indefensible - involving entrenched work rules that made the system less efficient - that the unions gained little sympathy even in the liberal Bay Area.

Not that BART management deserves any trophies for profiles in courage. Many of those work rules were the result of practices that endured for so long that they became locked into place, and changing them then became a matter of negotiation.

Both sides merit nothing but disgust for allowing the negotiations to drag on for months and months - and then, when given a 60-day cooling off period by Gov. Jerry Brown, they postured and fought until they crashed into yet another deadline. And then BART's two largest unions went on strike Friday.

This is no way to run a railroad, especially one that does the heavy lifting for the region's workers, students, shoppers and tourists who want or need to go somewhere without an automobile.

There is a pattern here. Every four years, the two sides engage in brinksmanship over a contract - sometimes precipitating a strike, but always making the region nervous - and finally reach a deal. At the end of the dance, each side acknowledges that better communication is needed to avoid a recurrence when that contract expires. Yet here we are, again and again and again, at the same breaking point.

This strike may represent the most egregious and most counterproductive overreach by the unions. They and their consultants should have recognized in July that public sentiment was not with them.

Their obliviousness has brought the issue to the fore: Why should workers in a service so essential to Bay Area life and safety even be allowed to strike? After all, transit strikes are illegal in New York, Washington, Chicago and other cities that would not be considered conservative bastions by any definition.

The legacy of this transit strike will be a much-needed debate over a law that could outlaw any future stoppages.