BART talks continue as deadline nears Talks continue in effort to avert 2nd service shutdown

Hundreds of BART workers and supporters rally in front of Oakland City Hall as talks go on. Hundreds of BART workers and supporters rally in front of Oakland City Hall as talks go on. Photo: Michael Macor, San Francisco Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, San Francisco Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close BART talks continue as deadline nears 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

With the clock ticking toward a Sunday night strike for BART, transit system officials made a last-ditch plea Thursday for unions to delay any walkout plans.

"There's still enough time to come to a commonsense agreement," Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, told reporters at BART's Oakland headquarters. "No one wants a strike."

But union leaders issued a courtesy 72-hour notice Thursday night that they could walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. Monday, when their 30-day contract extension ends, if progress is not made at the negotiating table. Union officials said that doesn't mean a strike is inevitable and that negotiations will continue.

"We want people to understand we're working hard for an agreement," said Antonette Bryant, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, which represents 945 train operators and station agents.

BART's biggest union, the SEIU, and a much smaller union joined in the strike warning. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 3993, which represents 210 workers, said its members also will walk if there's no agreement by Sunday night. The local has been bargaining separately from the two larger BART unions.

A walkout would leave 400,000 BART riders scrambling for another way to get to work. BART has reserved 96 private buses to provide limited service from East Bay BART stations to and from San Francisco if 2,600 union workers walk off the job. That service will cost the transit agency about $114,000 a day.

"Our plan is to bargain all the way through" to that Sunday deadline, said Pete Castelli, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents 1,433 BART mechanics, maintenance workers and professional workers. "We'll have to see how it goes."

But BART unions held a rally Thursday evening followed by a march to the transit agency's Lake Merritt headquarters, a move that was anything but conciliatory.

Hundreds of BART workers, many wearing union T-shirts and carrying signs calling for a new contract, filled the lawn at Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall.

Speaker after speaker, many from unions outside of BART, pledged solidarity with the transit workers in their search for a new contract.

Public appeal

BART officials continued to appeal to the public. While they had released the details of their latest offer to the unions earlier in the week, Thursday's focus was on the benefits their workers receive.

The transit agency provided charts and handouts to show that most public employees in the Bay Area contribute far more for their medical insurance and pensions than do BART workers, who pay nothing toward their pensions and a flat $92 a month for medical care for workers and their families.

In the past 12 years, BART's medical insurance costs have risen by 251 percent, from $24.6 million to an estimated $86.4 million next year, while workers' payments have increased from $25 to the current $92, BART officials said.

Pension costs have jumped by 126 percent since 2005, while employees still pay nothing toward the benefits, they added.

"This next contract must address the skyrocketing cost of employee benefits," Allison said. "Health costs are rising and we have to have employees share in some of that risk."

More pay, or less?

But BART's plan to boost its workers' share of benefit costs would wipe out the proposed 2 percent annual pay hikes over the next year and leave many employees worse off than they are now, Castelli countered.

BART workers, whose last contract included no pay raise and millions of dollars in givebacks, deserve to be taken care of now that ridership and revenue are on the rise, he said.

Castelli also complained about BART officials making their pitch to the media rather than at the bargaining table, where he said little progress is being made.

"They're a one-trick pony, telling everyone: 'Our workers make too much money,' " the union leader said. "They want us to strike, figuring that there will be a public backlash and we'll just collapse.

"That's not going to happen."

But while BART officials insist that the agency needs to resolve the benefits question now, they said there's no plan - and no wish - to provoke an all-or-nothing showdown with the unions.

"We are still at the table," said Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman. "No one is drawing a line in the sand."

-- Other options for commuters if BART workers strike. A8