Union chief accuses SEPTA of trying to provoke strike
The president of the largest union of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) said that the organization may be trying to ?provoke a strike? with the proposed contract. The Transportation Workers Union (TWU) and SEPTA have no scheduling bargaining talks, even though one of the union?s Local?s contracts has expired and two more are set to expire in the first week of April. TWU Local 234 president Willie Brown said that his membership would not strike if SEPTA agreed to submit contract proposals to binding arbitration, but the organization said that it would not. Although details of the proposed contract were not released, SEPTA officials said that the contract assumes a 3% increase of labor costs annually through 2019. At the same time as these disagreements seem to be reaching impasse, the State House of Representatives are debating a bill that would prohibit strikes by SEPTA workers, likely a reaction to the SEPTA strike of 2009 and the labor conflict in San Francisco this past summer.
See "Union chief accuses SEPTA of trying to provoke strike", Paul Nussbaum, Philly.com, March 17, 2014