OAKLAND (KRON) -- It's now up to the BART Board and the members of three unions representing the transit agency's workers to ratify an agreement to avert a looming strike which could have paralyzed the commute for millions of people in the Bay Area.
"After four months and a lot of hard work by everyone involved in this negotiation, I'm pleased to announce we have reached a tentative agreement with SEIU, ATU, and AFSCME on our labor contracts," BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said at a news conference announcing the pacts. "We've reached tentative agreement on a four year contract that represents sacrifice, compromise, and achieves the goals we set for these negotiations both for changes to work rules as well as capping our costs of benefits. We have still some steps ahead of us in this process with ratification by our unions and the BART board."
Details of the agreements remains unclear until the unions have had a chance to present them to members.
"We have just completed 27 hours of continuous negotiation," Service Employees International Union leader Lisa Isler said. "We're pleased that we've reached an agreement. We're pleased that everything has fallen into place, that three unions have come to an agreement on the very same day. We're looking forward to our ratification and getting this passed and getting it behind us and getting back to work and the public not having to worry about any interruption in their service."
Much of the final negotiation involved work rules involving members of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union.
"This has been an extraordinarily difficult negotiation in extraordinarily poor economic times," ATU President Jesse Hunt said. "This agreement means sacrifices for all parties involved. The pieces were at the table. We were able to get them put together and we'll be taking them to our membership for ratification."
Both sides concede a strike could have angered many riders considering the current economic downturn.
"I expect our members are aware of the economic times we are in," Isler added. "They know hard we've worked to achieve this. We've managed to have no job cuts. We've managed to have no salary cuts. We can get back to work providing service to the public."
Stay tuned to KRON 4 and KRON4.com for continuing coverage of the ratification votes on these agreements.
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