Web Search powered by YAHOO! SEARCH
share
email
font size
options
 
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Arbitration route needed to avoid SEPTA strikes
On her first day of work at a new job Carol Domagan, 33, Upper Darby, had to get on a pay phone to call her new boss to tell him she was stranded at 69th Street Terminal due to the SEPTA strike. ( Clem Murray / Staff Photographer )

 

The SEPTA strike that ended Monday wasn’t worth holding a city and a region hostage.
 
For six days, Transport Workers Union Local 234 threw the commuting public into turmoil. And when the strike ended, the union accepted an offer that was much like the one it had walked away from last week — an overly generous deal in tough economic times.
 
The union’s 5,000 drivers and mechanics will receive bonuses of $1,250 just for ratifying the new contract, plus 11.5 percent in raises over the next five years. The leadership of Local 234 held out for better work rules and slightly enhanced pensions.
 
SEPTA employees felt justified in striking, but they must know that the people who depend on them to get to work and school don’t share that view. The public is especially resentful because Local 234 used commuters as pawns, once again, in a game that the union feels it can’t lose. Resentful or not, many commuters need mass transit.
 
But the union did lose, big time, in the court of public opinion. Does the union care? The public already knows the answer to that — an answer that was delivered at 3 a.m. Nov. 3 without warning when Local 234 shut down all buses, trains, and trolleys in the city. It was no way to treat the customers who pay their salaries.
 
So great is the union’s leverage in these periodic walkouts that some have suggested SEPTA and its unions should agree to binding arbitration. SEPTA has resisted, but this option should at least be explored. The cumulative impact of transit strikes has dealt another blow to the region’s reputation as a reliable place to do business, especially when 39 other states have outlawed strikes by public-sector employees.
 
Now that Local 234 has secured such a good deal, there’s concern that the city’s municipal unions will demand the same in contract negotiations with Mayor Nutter. But the SEPTA deal shouldn’t have any bearing on those talks.
 
The two situations involve different pots of money. SEPTA’s financial picture has improved, at least temporarily, because of enhanced state funding approved in 2007. The transit agency receives very little money from the city, deriving the vast majority of its funding from the state and from fares.
 
Meanwhile, the city’s fiscal outlook is still grim. Nutter needed last-minute approval from the state to raise the city’s sales tax and avoid deeper budget cuts. It was a deal intended to keep the city afloat and preserve jobs, not to hand out signing bonuses and generous raises.
 
Gov. Rendell and Rep. Bob Brady (D., Pa.) deserve credit for acting as go-betweens in the SEPTA strike and working to resolve the crisis. As bad as the walkout was, their efforts helped to prevent it from turning into a long-term commuter nightmare.
Posted by Inquirer Editorial Board @ 2:00 AM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
Posted 09:49 AM, 11/10/2009
chrissmith
Public sector employees should not be allowed to strike. Period. 39 other states prohibit such strikes.
1 comments
About The Inquirer Editorial Board
Harold Jackson, a winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, grew up in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement. He graduated from Baker University in Baldwin, Kan., in 1975, with a degree in journalism/political science. He has also worked at the Birmingham Post-Herald, United Press International, the Birmingham News, and the Baltimore Sun. He was at The Inquirer in the mid-1980s, returned in 1999, and became editorial page editor in 2007.

Paul Davies is the deputy editor of the Editorial Page. His newspaper career has spanned more than 20 years and includes stints at The Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Daily News. He graduated from the University of Delaware and received a masters in journalism from Columbia University, where he was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. He was born in Philadelphia and still lives in the city.

Tony Auth began drawing while bedridden for a year and a half at the age of five. He graduated from UCLA in 1965 and worked for six years as a medical illustrator while doing three cartoons a week for various college newspapers. Tony has been happily ensconced as The Inquirer’s editorial cartoonist since 1971. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976, and has won numerous other awards, including five Overseas Press Club Awards, the Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished service in Journalism, and the Herblock and Thomas Nast Prizes. Tony is married to Eliza Drake Auth, a painter of realistic landscapes and portraits.

Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column appears twice weekly in The Inquirer and runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.

Kevin Ferris is an assistant editor on the Editorial Board who oversees the Sunday Currents section and writes a weekly column on a wide range of issues. In his 15 years on the board, he’s handled letters to the editor and the Community Voices pages and has been Commentary Page editor. He started with The Inquirer in 1986, and his assignments have ranged from the copy and news desks to the Chester County bureau and the national/foreign desk.

As an editorial writer for The Inquirer for the past two decades, Russell Cooke has written on a wide range of topics covering government, legal, civic and social issues. Before joining the Editorial Board, he was a reporter in the Inquirer’s City Hall bureau.

Editorial writer Dave Boyer joined The Inquirer in 2002. He writes about politics, government, the economy, sports and many other subjects, but draws the line at writing about "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." He has won journalism awards and insists bribery was not involved. A native of Allentown, Boyer graduated from Penn State. He and his wife reside in Center City, where they enjoy strolling and paying the wage tax.

Melanie Burney joined the editorial board in January 2008 after covering education at the Inquirer for eight years. She previously worked at the Associated Press in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Josh Gohlke has been The Inquirer’s op-ed editor since last year, editing the daily commentary page and writing occasional editorials. He came to the Inquirer after eight years at The Record of Bergen County, N.J., first as a reporter covering local and state politics and government and ultimately as the deputy editorial page editor. He also worked as a reporter for several smaller papers in New Jersey and California. Josh was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from Stanford University. He lives in Philadelphia.

Advertise Here