Sure, Brown no doubt believed he was doing his job like any other tough Philly union leader. But you have to know when to take the money and run.
Brown, a former trolley driver, had already out-negotiated SEPTA's management. After all, how many other workers these days are being offered a $1,250 signing bonus and an 11.5 percent raise over five years?
And how many workers contribute only 1 percent of their pay toward health-care coverage? For SEPTA bus and trolley drivers and other workers in the union, whose average salary is $52,000 a year, that works out to $10 a week.
Brown had done such a good job at the negotiating table that SEPTA's management passed on trying to get workers to contribute more toward health care. Health-care costs are going up by double digits every year, but instead of getting employees to contribute to those costs, SEPTA had agreed to cover almost all of them. In fact, the Daily News reported that the proposed contract would have increased coverage of Viagra and other erectile-dysfunction drugs.
SEPTA's offer was already better than the one Pittsburgh's transit workers recently accepted. But Brown was holding out for better pension benefits.
It's easy to get angry at Brown. But frustrated riders should also wonder what SEPTA's management was thinking when it offered to give away the store in this economic climate. Gov. Rendell called SEPTA's offer "sensational" and said the union leadership was "nuts" to walk out. "I think the SEPTA workers would have jumped at this," he said.
That would have been true of workers in most other sectors. Given the recession and an unemployment rate near 10 percent, many Americans lucky enough to still have jobs are looking at salary freezes, pay cuts, and furloughs. And they are certainly contributing more than $10 a week to their health insurance.
