Commuters in the San Francisco area sought out alternate forms of transportation once Bay Area Rapid Transit workers left their work posts for picket lines, in the public transportation group's first strike since 1997.
Around 400,000 residents of Northern California's greater Bay Area were forced to find another way around, as dozens of workers from the two protesting unions-Service Employees International Union Local 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 155-gathered around various BART stations Monday morning to demonstrate.
After workers failed to reach contract negotiations on Sunday night, they left their jobs promptly Monday morning.
The unions are asking for a 4.5 percent raise every year from the next three years, ABC's local affiliate reported. They also are calling for more stringent safety standards, not only for employees, but passengers as well.
BART claimed that it will offer workers a two percent pay raise every year for four years, in addition to scaling back the projected increase in healthcare prices. But the unions have fired back, saying that BART's latest expected increase is rooted in impractical projections and most likely will only come out to about $1 a year.
After the unions departed from the negotiation table, ATU Local President Antonette Bryant apologized for what she said her constituents were forced to do.
"We came here as a last-ditch effort as requested by the governor's office, to sit down with this employer to try and see if they would present us with a proposal that we could work with," she said.
But no such pitch satisfied the union workers' needs. As a result, BART's first employee resistance in 16 years began.
On Monday morning, commuters trooped onto packed shuttle buses, freeways and ferries, as local public transportation bodies scrambled to get things together.
AC Transit buses were loaded up to capacity, SF Gate reported.
Oakland resident Ilysha Kipnis told Gate that she expected only limited BART service, not complete shutdown of train service. Buses and ferries organized by locals were jammed to the brim, so she went back on the bus home to wait out the traffic.
"We're so reliant on public transportation." Kipnis, who works at a salon in San Francisco, said. "Hopefully [BART directors] understand how much we need the trains to run...I really need it."
