BART workers go on strike

Turnstiles sit idle behind closed gates at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland, CA Friday, October 18, 2013. Bay Area Transit workers went on strike shutting down train service after BART management and union leaders with Bay the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and the SEIU Local 1021failed to reach a contract agreement. less Turnstiles sit idle behind closed gates at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland, CA Friday, October 18, 2013. Bay Area Transit workers went on strike shutting down train service after BART management and ... more Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 65 Caption Close BART workers go on strike 1 / 65 Back to Gallery

BART workers went on strike early Friday morning, leaving hundreds of thousands of Bay Area commuters scrambling for ways to get to work.

After a marathon bargaining session that lasted nearly 30 hours, Roxanne Sanchez, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, walked out of the Oakland negotiations late Thursday afternoon and said the talks were over and that union workers would walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

SEIU spokeswoman Cecille Isidro confirmed shortly after midnight that the unions were on strike.

"We made concessions, but you can only bend so far before you break," Sanchez said. "This is the way they want to solve the conflict, in a fight, a street fight."

Both the unions and BART management agreed that the two sides were close to an agreement on economic issues Thursday, but the talks broke down over the transit agency's call for work rule changes.

The unions' position was that "we'll take more money but won't even talk to you about work rules," Tom Radulovich, president of BART's Board of Directors, said after the talks ended. "We need to be able to manage the district."

While the unions offered to settle the unresolved issues through binding arbitration, union officials said BART management rejected that suggestion.

"It is a risk we would be taking," Sanchez said. "We'd rather take the risk than shut down the Bay Area."

When BART and union representatives talk about "work rules" leading to the breakdown in negotiations, they're primarily referring to a clause in their contract that refers to past practices, or the way things have been done previously. To change a past practice, BART's contracts require mutual agreement between management and the unions which can be hard to get.

According to BART officials, that makes it difficult to make technological changes like having station agents file reports by e-mail instead of writing them out longhand, using e-mail instead of fax machines to send documents and sending paycheck stubs to each work location electronically instead of hand-delivering them.

"It's something that's unique to BART among transit agencies," said Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman.

It also prevents BART from making changes in the way it schedules workers or adds extra service on holidays, Trost said. For instance, if BART adds service on a holiday because of a special event, the unions could force the agency to schedule similar service the next year on that holiday, even if the event is not being held.

'Have to keep doing it'

"Because we did something once or twice," she said, "we have to keep doing it."

Union officials said there are reasons to keep past practices alive, including preventing BART management from making punitive work assignments to employees who have filed workplace complaints.

"They offered us a poison pill, trade your paycheck for your rights," said Peter Castelli, executive director of the SEIU local.

The details of the ongoing labor dispute don't matter much to the hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents who will be affected by the planned walkout. They just want things settled and quickly.

San Francisco resident Tanya Fruehe's commute won't be affected by a strike, but as a manager at the Daily Grill in Union Square, she said she has to deal with the possibility of up to 20 percent of her staff not being able to show up Friday.

"They've been staying up late every night this week to hear if there would be a strike, and if they'd be able to make it to work," said Fruehe, 26. "We've had to put up notes about what to do in case of a BART strike. We've had to try to not schedule the people who live in Oakland or elsewhere this week."

Liz Briody, 23, uses BART every day to get from her home in Berkeley to San Francisco. She had to stay over at friends' apartments during the last BART strike, but she said she supports the process.

"It's frustrating, but it's just like any union," Briody said. "We have to take it one day at a time, and hopefully they'll reach a deal soon."

While the negotiations stopped, the finger-pointing didn't, with each side blaming the other for the meltdown.

'Absolute arrogance'

"This is not a union strike," said Antonette Bryant, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555. "This is a management strike brought on by absolute arrogance."

But Radulovich said it was the unions that walked out of the negotiations Thursday.

A decision to call a strike "is not up to us," he said. "Strike threats have been coming like clockwork in a game of brinksmanship by workers."

When it became clear that there wasn't going to be an agreement on work rules, BART asked the unions to take the offer on the table to their membership for a vote, said Grace Crunican, the transit district's general manager.

That request came with an "or else" attached. The current offer, which includes retroactive pay back to July 1, is only good until Oct. 27, Crunican said. After that, the retroactive pay is off the table.

But Sanchez said there wouldn't be a vote on BART's contract offer because her members wouldn't ratify it.

The agency's final offer included a 12 percent raise over four years and provisions that would have employees paying a 4 percent pension contribution by the final year of the contract and a 9.5 percent increase in their health-insurance contribution.

BART says it needs to budget for costly systemwide improvements that include spending $15 billion over the next 15 to 20 years to replace 40-year-old railcars, upgrade the train control system and add a new maintenance facility.

Mediators leaving

The threat of a strike has loomed since Sunday, when a 60-day cooling-off period ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown expired. Three federal mediators have been working with both sides since Sunday.

While progress was made, "in the final analysis, there were certain items where the parties were unable to bridge the gap," said federal mediator George Cohen, who announced his team was returning to Washington, D.C.

Radulovich, however, continued to hold out hope for a new contract, saying there was room for negotiation.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Henry K. Lee and Vivian Ho contributed to this report.

Proposal at a glance:

Key issues in BART's final offer to its unions and where the two sides disagree. A13