SEPTA union workers vote to authorize strike unless they can reach deal with management

SEPTA workers in the Transport Workers Union Local 234, the largest workers' union for SEPTA, have voted to authorize a strike unless they can reach a deal with management.

Union members met Sunday to issue votes, and the vote was unanimous in favor of a strike, 6ABC reported. A union representative said their main concern is safety and security issues, but they are also fighting for more pay. The union has reportedly been meeting with SEPTA about these concerns since July.

MORE: SEPTA general manager Leslie Richards to resign amid budget crisis

The strike would go into effect unless the union, which represents more than 5,300 employees, can reach a deal with management by midnight on Thursday, Nov. 7, NBC10 reported. TWU Local 234 represents SEPTA operators of buses, subway lines and trolleys, as well as mechanics, custodians, maintenance workers and cashiers.

"Yesterday, many of us gathered at Midvale Depot to honor the one-year anniversary of the murder of Bernard Gribbin," TWU President Brian Pollitt, who heads the union’s negotiating committee said Sunday, according to NBC10. "Because too little has changed in the year since his untimely death, I have been forced to gather us here today to ask you to give me the authority to call a strike, if the Executive Board deems it necessary to achieve our objectives. ... 

"(D)espite the ongoing threat to frontline workers, SEPTA management has stonewalled the union’s proposals for supplying bulletproof vests and shields, more cameras and additional law enforcement in the subway, along with a functioning radio system so SEPTA workers can alert the authorities to dangerous incidents."

Gribbin, a SEPTA bus driver, was killed last October after being shot six times by a woman after she stepped off his Route 23 bus in Germantown.

"SEPTA is in ongoing talks with TWU Local 234 regarding a new contract," SEPTA said in a statement to 6ABC. "We are committed to engaging in good-faith negotiations, with the goal of reaching an agreement that is fair to our hard-working employees and to the customers and taxpayers who fund SEPTA."

SEPTA announced last week that general manager and CEO Leslie Richards will leave her job at the end of November in the midst of the public transportation system's push for more state funding as it faces a projected $240 million budget deficit in the coming fiscal year.

Last October, SEPTA and TWU Local 234 reached a tentative deal for a new labor contract, preventing a strike that would have disrupted transit service in Philadelphia.