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 Mechanics, custodians, and clerical workers of the roughly
1,400-member Service Employees Union Local 1021 (SEIU) voted 87
percent in favor of the four-year contract, which will take effect
immediately, the labor group said on Monday.
"In California, we believe in workers having a voice in the
workplace in order to improve working conditions and services to the
public," SEIU Executive Director Pete Castelli said in a statement.
The SEIU was the last group to vote on the deal. Members of the
Amalgamated Transit Union 1555 and the BART Board of Directors gave
approval to the contracts earlier this month.
Under the revised terms, more than 2,000 unionized workers will see
a 15.4 percent wage hike over four years and added safety provisions
in exchange for new contributions to their pensions — with the
amount rising to 4 percent of their pay in the last year of the
contract — and paying more for health benefits, both sides have
said.
It also drops the six weeks of paid family medical leave, a
provision that caused an 11th-hour rift between BART and the unions,
but includes extended bereavement leave and upgraded employee break
rooms, BART said.
One BART agency employee and one contractor were struck and killed
by a train operating on automatic control on October 19 over the
last strike period.
The two sides reached a deal in late October, ending a four-day
employee walkout that caused traffic delays and forced passengers to
miss work and school or be hours late.
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It was the second strike since July that crippled a system that
serves more than 400,000 people a day in San Francisco, Oakland,
Berkeley and surrounding suburbs.
Shortly after the unions ratified the agreement, BART said it had
mistakenly agreed to a deal term that would give workers six weeks
of paid family medical leave. The unions sued to enforce the
contract, which they said BART unlawfully reneged on.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney in San Francisco;
writing by Eric M.
Johnson; editing by Hugh Lawson)
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