Photo: Transportation Workers Union members march in Philadelphia’s Labor Day parade earlier this year. Credit — TWU Local 234
As the year came to a close, three Philadelphia area unions coordinated to authorize strikes in the same time frame, a bargaining tactic that could have brought almost every public service from trash pickups and crossing guards to trains and buses to a screeching halt. Within days, the city’s ruling class “found” exactly enough money to fill the systemic funding gap with a one-year, one-time payment.
SEPTA’s largest transportation union, Transportation Workers Union 234, authorized a strike after the expiration of their contract on November 11. For two weeks, the entire Philadelphia metro area held its breath as the negotiations played out. Then, workers of another SEPTA union whose contract was expiring soon, SMART 1594, also authorized a strike. Then AFSCME DC 33, representing 9,000 city workers whose contract expired in July, did the same.
These three unions publicly worked together to make SEPTA’s owners and Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration meet their demands.
Two ruling class parties vs three working class unions
Republicans in the state legislature were holding SEPTA funding hostage, and the Democratic Parker administration had cancelled years-long plans to overhaul SEPTA services. As a consequence, SEPTA was approaching a “death spiral” of fare hikes and shrinking ridership.
But even under these difficult conditions, TWU 234 won a 5% raise, a boost to pensions, and security improvements. Safety is one of the most important items in the contract following a slew of assaults on SEPTA operators across the city. A SEPTA worker that runs the 39 bus at Lehigh and American quoted “I just want to feel protected, we just want the resources we need so we can go home to our families at the end of the shift.”
It’s generally understood the TWU, the largest union of SEPTA workers, will set the bar for SMART, making this a victory for SEPTA employees broadly. Even SEPTA’s non-unionized employees stand to benefit, with wage increases usually passed on from union wins. When we struggle and stand together, we all win.
Another $153 million bandaid
But there is still a broader struggle ahead over the future of Philly’s public transportation. Looking at the broader political landscape, we have Pennsylvania Republicans fighting to gut SEPTA funding, an anemic Democratic party that offers no alternative, and an incoming presidential administration that all but vows to attack public transportation. The new boost in funding announced by Governor Shapiro only delays another funding crisis.
Ultimately, the raise earned was 5%. This generally is regarded as good by SEPTA’s standards, but the pre-existing problems still loom: struggles to hire and retain personnel due to hostile and dangerous working conditions, lack of competitive pay and benefits with limited appeal to young people, and a federal government hostile to public transportation.
Additionally, this is a one-year contract beginning one year after the previous one-year contract. The negotiations next year may be even more existential. And the executives who run SEPTA can conveniently use underfunding and political uncertainty as an excuse to claim that it cannot pay workers a fair share because the state does not pay SEPTA a fair share. And there is of course some truth to this, for instance the SEPTA repair backlog would cost nearly $5 billion dollars to clear.
Under the absurd current setup, SEPTA’s funding model has to be figured out each year. But transit projects are extremely infrastructurally intensive, with many projects requiring 5 or 10 years to come to completion, and many more years to reach ridership goals. The fact that SEPTA is unable to plan shows how the profit driven and arbitrary nature of economic decision making under capitalism harms workers very directly.
Despite this new injection of funds, it is clear that there is still a larger fight to win over SEPTA’s future. Battle lines are frequently shifting, but the path to victory is to build fighting worker’s institutions that can arrest and reverse capitalist attacks on the people’s livelihood.
