Their contract with SEPTA expired on March 15. Terms of that agreement were extended twice. On June 15, neither SEPTA nor the union agreed to a third extension. Since then, union members have been working on a day-to-day basis as contract talks have stalled over health-care issues.
"We've used every possible venue known to man to try to get a deal," Jeff Brooks, president of Local 234, said at a news conference after yesterday's membership meeting. "Unfortunately, SEPTA has taken a position that has been nothing but regressive."
SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney accused the union of choosing a strike date that would "create chaos" for thousands of riders.
"A transit strike at this time of year would create conflict for hundreds of schoolchildren, university students, and for businesses during the critically important holiday-shopping season," Maloney said.
Bus, subway and trolley service would be suspended in the city, along with 19 bus routes in Montgomery and Bucks Counties. A strike would not affect the regional rails that provide transportation between the city and suburbs.
The last SEPTA strike was in 1998 and lasted 40 days.
Both sides said the main stumbling block in contract talks has been proposed increases in health-care premiums. Brooks said SEPTA wants the members to pay 20 percent of their health-care premiums. Those members have gone without pay raises in recent years, he has said, in exchange for SEPTA picking up the tab on their health care.
Members are also fighting a SEPTA proposal that future retirees not receive lifetime prescription benefits, as current pensioners do.
Maloney said yesterday that the financially strapped authority, which projected a $92 million deficit this year, had no choice but to seek such concessions.
