Pedrow said that a pension valuation is performed annually and that "SEPTA funds what is required, no more, no less."
Brown said that he was willing to withdraw union requests from the 186-page labor contract but wanted SEPTA to "crunch the numbers" to evaluate costs before he would withdraw anything.
"We could wake up and our pension could be completely gone," he said. "We don't want to end up like AIG, " referring to the international insurance giant who got $173 billion since last fall in a U.S. government bailout.
Brown said that earlier this week he had been looking at costs in the labor package to see what he could pull off the table to close what he believed was a $16 million gap between union and SEPTA management proposals.
Brown said that he scaled back the union's request for three years of pension increases, saving what he believed was $9 million. And he withdrew the demand to increase the monthly disability payment to $750 from $500, which reduced the gap by another $1 million.
In health care, the union believed it could save $2.3 million by urging members to switch from a Personal Choice health plan to a less expensive HMO.
By then, he believed the gap was about $4 million, not much when considering SEPTA's budget is $1 billion, he said.
"Now was time for the razzle-dazzle of moving things around," he said. "But the closer we got to closing the gap of $16 million, they stopped talking to us."
During a 13-to-14-hour session, Pedrow said, "Time and time again, they'd ask us to rerun the numbers again and again, and then another set of numbers.
"We've been negotiating for a year," he added.
