BART strike Friday

Photo by aaron_anderer

BART workers are planning to strike Friday morning, local media reports, so your commute might not be pretty. After more than a days’ worth of time spent at the bargaining table, BART and its two largest unions were left in disagreement on health care and pension issues.

From SFGate,

“Roxanne Sanchez, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, said Thursday afternoon that they met BART on its health care and pension requests, but the two sides still could not come to an agreement on pay and work conditions…While the unions offered to settle the remaining unresolved issues through binding arbitration, BART management reportedly rejected that suggestion.”

BART General Manager Grace Crunican told SFGate that there are certain rights that management needed to retain. BART’s final offer included a 12 percent raise over four years. Employees would be paying a 4 percent pension contribution and a 9.5 percent increase in their health-insurance contribution.

Of course, this is not what we wanted to report, but there you go. Got reports of your BART-alternative commute? Tweet it to us at @bartdiaries.