Union says it will 'go back to work immediately' if SEPTA agrees to arbitration

GOV. RENDELL said late last night that negotiators for SEPTA management and unionized transit workers who have been on strike for four days had agreed upon a tentative contract proposal.

"I'm very optimistic that the trains and buses will be running by [this] evening," Rendell said at a news conference at the Bellevue, at Broad and Walnut streets.

Rendell stressed that the negotiating teams for the Transport Workers Union Local 234 and SEPTA still have to take the proposal to their executive boards for approval today. The governor said that he hoped to announce a contract agreement this afternoon.

"Until both sides agree, there is no contract," he said.

Rendell has been involved in the negotiations since last week. U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, another key negotiator, arrived at the Bellevue just before Rendell's 11 p.m. news conference.

Brady, a member of the carpenters union, had been urging the transit union to keep open lines of communication since workers walked off the job early Tuesday, halting subways, buses and trolleys in the city and crippling the region with gridlock.

Rendell said that if both sides accepted the proposal, the deal would mean "five years of labor peace."

The wage proposal in the latest offer for a five-year contract includes a $1,250 signing bonus but no raise in the first year, a 2.5 percent raise in year two, and 3 percent raises for each of the remaining three years, Rendell said.

That is the same wage proposal union leaders rejected before calling a strike, but Rendell said that last night's pension offer was better than the previous one.

He said that the proposal would cost only about $200,000 more than the original offer.

Rendell said he had told negotiators: "If we didn't get it done tonight, I had to drop out."

He said that as governor, he was responsible for 67 counties in Pennsylvania but that he has spent the past week dealing with the problems of one county.

"There's a limit to our patience," he said.

Earlier, Local 234 President Willie Brown told the Daily News that the union was willing to end the strike immediately if SEPTA management agreed to go to binding arbitration.

"That will be fair to both sides," said Brown, who dubbed himself "the most hated man in Philadelphia" for calling a strike without warning at 3 a.m. Tuesday.

Brown's change of mind came after City Councilmen Bill Green and Curtis Jones Jr. met with him yesterday and suggested that binding arbitration was a way to break the deadlock over wages and pension benefits.

"As things reached an impasse [yesterday] and we were hearing threats of lawsuits [by Mayor Nutter], Councilman Jones and I brainstormed about what might get transit workers back to work," Green told the Daily News.

Nutter had said that the city had been exploring whether it could get a court order to force the union back to work, but City Solicitor Shelley Smith explained that the city did not plan to go to court right away because of the high standards required for getting an injunction.

"When we suggested to Willie Brown that the union end the strike if SEPTA agreed to winner-take-all, no-splitting-the-baby, binding arbitration on wages and pensions, he said OK," Green said.

In binding arbitration, both sides must comply with the decision of a neutral arbiter, who would select one of the contract proposals.

"Curtis and I had not been involved in negotiations, had no emotional involvement in this and, frankly, are not picking sides," Green said.

Rendell said that union's proposal to go to binding arbitration was "never in the cards."

"There's more chance that I'll be combing my hair in a pompadour than SEPTA agreeing to binding arbitration," said the balding governor.

"Binding arbitration takes away the face-to-face," Brady added. "You can't get things done without the face-to-face."

Staff writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.