Unions give BART 1 more day to reach deal Unions push deadline back 1 day - agency wants final offer put to vote

BART and its workers failed to reach a labor agreement Sunday night - but unions said they would not go on strike and would give the transit agency one more day to reach a new pact.

Union leaders said they were extending the strike deadline - until Monday at midnight - out of courtesy to riders.

The announcement came after a group of state legislators who had been talking to BART and its unions throughout the day said late Sunday that BART issued a surprise final offer at 4 p.m. that hurt the effort to avoid a strike. The legislators asked the unions not to walk off the job and asked BART to withdraw its offer and continue talking.

BART General Manager Grace Crunican said the agency had no intention of doing that. She said BART will give the union two weeks to have its members vote on the offer, which she described as a 12 percent raise over four years, a 4 percent pension contribution and a 5 percent medical contribution.

"It's time to bring this to a close," Crunican said. "The Bay Area is tired of going to bed at night not knowing if there will be a strike."

The unions did not announce whether they would allow their members to vote.

Antonette Bryant, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, said the two sides were very close to reaching a deal when BART withdrew its offer and came back with its final offer, which she said was less lucrative.

Stanley Green of Martinez expresses his opinion outside the building in Oakland where the BART contract is being negotiated. Stanley Green of Martinez expresses his opinion outside the building in Oakland where the BART contract is being negotiated. Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Unions give BART 1 more day to reach deal 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

"For us to be so close and have BART stop talking is ridiculous," she said.

Long day of negotiating

News of BART's final offer came after the two sides had spent most of the day hunkered down inside the Caltrans building in uptown Oakland, where bargaining has been taking place. They started talks in the morning, taking only brief breaks for food and coffee as they struggled to reach a deal.

A federal negotiator had asked the parties not to discuss details with the media, and most of the day the blackout was honored.

Heading back into the building at about 3 p.m., BART's chief negotiator, Tom Hock, said agreements had been reached on some issues but that much work remained, including deals on the key issues of pay raises, health insurance and pension costs. Asked if they were making enough headway to head off a midnight strike, he said, "It's hard to say, but we are making progress."

How BART pay compares

Salaries of BART workers vary by job, but a typical station agent or train operator is paid $63,000 a year, not including overtime. Employees, union and nonunion, make no contributions to their pension plans and pay a flat rate of $92 a month for their health insurance, regardless of the plan or number of people covered.

A Chronicle analysis found that BART workers aren't at the top when their salaries are compared with employees at other large American transit agencies, but their low-cost health care and lack of pension contributions put them among the best off. The same characterization applies to the transit agency's executives.

The bargaining teams had plenty of company in the Caltrans building. Several members of the Bay Area legislative delegation from Sacramento, as well as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service dropped in and met with BART management and representatives of its two largest unions, Service Employees International Local 1021 and ATU. But the politicians apparently were told they were not welcome to join bargaining sessions.

The strike deadline was set by the unions on Thursday night when Gov. Jerry Brown's last shot at stopping a strike, a 60-day cooling-off period, expired. The unions and BART agreed to talk through the weekend in hope of avoiding a commute-crippling strike.

Since then, the pace of the talks and the mood of participants had seemed to pick up. After meetings with Crunican all day Friday, the two sides spent most of Saturday fine-tuning their proposals and didn't meet face-to-face until the evening.

Some early optimism

As they entered the Caltrans building, where the unions are on one floor and BART on the other, representatives from BART and the unions expressed some optimism that a deal could be reached before the strike deadline. But both sides said the responsibility for reaching a deal lies with the other side.

In addition to negotiations over wages and pension and health care contributions, there are differences over safety concerns and work rules that also need to be resolved. A BART strike would cause gridlock around the Bay Area. The transit district's weekday ridership exceeds 400,000. And although regional transportation officials have cobbled together a strike plan enlisting charter buses, larger transit buses and ferries, they acknowledge that there is no way to replace BART's capacity, though they say filling empty seats in commuters' cars through carpooling is the best bet.