A deal between unions and management has brought to an end the four-day Bay Area transit worker strike. The BART system is expected to be fully operational again by Tuesday afternoon.
The labor actions, following months-long disputes over pay and workplace policy, extracted from BART management what it admits is "more than [it] wanted to pay." BART's general manager told the Los Angeles Times, "We compromised to get to this place, as did our union members."
The L.A. Times noted that "a new layer of urgency [was added] onto the stalled negotiations" when two BART track inspectors were struck and killed by an out-of-service train, driven by a trainee, on the weekend. "BART had been training some managers as operators so they could run skeletal commuter service in the event of a prolonged strike — a practice unions had opposed, calling it unsafe," the L.A. Times reported.
The two sides agreed on pension and healthcare contributions and came close on salary. But other issues, which included the length of the workday and the amount of input workers have over changes in procedure, thwarted a deal. Safety concerns over tunnel lighting, track clearing and track signage were also among unresolved issues.