THE SIX-DAY-OLD strike that is taxing the shoe leather and the patience of Philadelphia commuters is not doing any favors for the rest of the country, either.

One reason became clear over the weekend, when talks fell apart over a few issues; one of them being SEPTA's request to revisit health-care provisions in the contract if national health-care legislation increases the agency's costs.

The rejection of this request isn't exactly a public embrace of health-care reform, or a thumbs up to the House health-care vote preceding SEPTA's announcement. Labor has generally been supportive of health-care reform, although recently, a coalition of national labor leaders has been opposing a tax on higher-priced health plans pushed by the Senate. (Given that this tax would help pay for covering those who aren't insured, this stance doesn't strike us as all that collective in spirit.)

On another front, this strike casts doubt on the promise of mass-transit systems as a way to decrease our dependence on oil. Cities like ours have boasted that complex mass-transit systems make cities well-positioned to solve this country's energy problems; a strike like this points to how vulnerable and instable that system can be. *