SEPTA and its transit police have reached a tentative agreement, ending 3-day strike

Three days after going on strike, the union for Philadelphia’s transit police officers returned to work Saturday afternoon after reaching a tentative contract agreement with SEPTA that was brokered in part by Gov. Josh Shapiro.

SEPTA said it expected to have a full complement on duty for the 11 p.m. shift.

The deal needs to be ratified by the roughly 170 members of the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109 and by the SEPTA board, which could vote on it as soon as Thursday.

The agreement comes amid heightened fears bout safety on public transit and a funding crisis for SEPTA, which projects it will face a devastating budget deficit next year.

» READ MORE: SEPTA transit police are on strike

Tension in the contract dispute had ratcheted up over the last several days, and on Friday an agreement seemed further away than it had been just before the patrol officers walked off the job Wednesday night.

Both sides agreed that Shapiro’s intervention helped end the standoff, with SEPTA CEO Leslie S. Richards crediting the governor with “playing a key role bringing people together to forge this agreement.”

Omari Bervine, the union’s president said Shapiro ”stepped up to the plate.”

“With his involvement, we scored the gains we needed. The governor made it clear to both sides that public safety was of paramount importance,” Bervine said in a statement. “This is a huge win for SEPTA transit passengers.”

A major sticking point was the timing of pay raises. Sources familiar with the tentative agreement said SEPTA agreed to the union’s demand that the contract phase in a 13% raise for officers over 36 months, rather than 43 months.

The union was adamant about the quickened timeline, which it says keeps SEPTA’s police officers on the same schedule for raises as the transit agency’s other unions.

Its members, however, will miss out on $3,000 bonuses that SEPTA had put on the table as an incentive not to strike. SEPTA withdrew its offer on the bonuses Thursday morning after union members began picketing SEPTA headquarters.

» READ MORE: Striking SEPTA police worry agency’s contingency plan won’t keep commuters safe

In the end, the union accepted the loss of the bonus in exchange for being able to get the raises faster, the sources said.

“We felt like we got exactly what we were asking for,” Bervine said. “We told everybody, anybody who would listen, what the issue was. It was a parity issue.”

Tensions grew after the union walked off the job when some striking officers seeking medical care for themselves or family discovered that SEPTA had suspended their health-care coverage, Bervine, a patrol officer for 17 years, said on Friday.

“We’re actually moving in reverse,” Bervine said Friday afternoon. The cancellation of benefits stung, he said: “It’s despicable, to be honest. … Now, they’re making it personal.”

On Friday, after a bargaining session of a little less than two hours, a state mediator advised the two teams to adjourn, revisit their respective proposals again, and come back to try to solve the core issue: the length of the contract and timing of raises for union members.

The transit officers had been working without a contract since March 31, and their union had been bargaining with SEPTA for nearly nine months with little progress.

Most police contract disputes in Pennsylvania are settled voluntarily or in binding arbitration. SEPTA transit police, however, do not have the option of sending conflicts to binding arbitration under the legislation that created that department.

Transit police supervisors and officers from other departments, including Philadelphia’s, were covering the system during the strike.

» READ MORE: $3 SEPTA fares and dramatic service cuts loom as the agency lobbies for more state money

SEPTA says it has severe financial constraints. Transit funding is often in flux, but the agency now faces a $240 million annual deficit beginning next year as the last portion of federal pandemic aid is spent. A proposal to increase the allocation of the sales tax dedicated to transit did not pass in the recently concluded legislative session. SEPTA would have received $190 million from that legislation.

Like other transit systems in the nation, SEPTA has struggled to bounce back after the COVID-19 pandemic, with ridership less than 65% of what it was in 2019 as commuters lament issues with scheduling, service, and the overall state of the transit network.

The proposed $3,000 signing bonus for agreeing to a new contract was contingent on the FOTP not striking, SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said. “That was very clear in the proposal and we don’t expect that language to change,” he said.

Suspending health benefits of employees during a strike is standard operating procedure for SEPTA, Busch said, adding that letters were sent reminding members of the policy right after the union formally authorized a strike Oct. 6.

“It’s an unfortunate reality of a strike,” Busch said. He said the suspension was not intended as a “warning” to employees to stop striking or retaliation for doing so. Strikers were eligible for supplemental insurance under COBRA.

Bervine said SEPTA’s benefits administrator told him Friday that members were sent emails reminding them of the availability of supplemental insurance, but he said their access to email was turned off. He said he heard from one officer who was heartbroken that his wife couldn’t receive a scheduled cancer treatment because, without insurance coverage, it would have cost the family about $20,000.

Before the strike, the transit police union and SEPTA were in agreement on employee benefits and wages, they said: a 13% pay increase and a $3,000 signing bonus, on par with a recent deal struck between the transit agency and its largest union, Transport Workers Union Local 234.

Transit police, however, want those wages spread over a three-year contract, which Lodge 109 vice president Troy Parham said has been the standard duration of deals SEPTA has offered its other unions. He said the offer to his members was for a 43-month term, or a little over 3½ years.

TWU’s wage increase was spread over three years, the two years of its former contract and the one-year deal ratified in November. Traditionally, SEPTA uses the TWU deal to set the parameters of contracts with its other unions, a process known as pattern bargaining.

An economist hired by Lodge 109 found that the union’s demands would cost the authority about $650,000 — or 0.04% of its annual operating budget.

The two sides have a recent history of hard-fought labor negotiations.

In 2019, transit officers walked out for six days, in part over whether members could review body-camera footage before filing incident reports. They struck in 2012 over a 15-cent difference between the FOTP’s demand and SEPTA’s offer for an increase in the hourly rate that members received for annual recertification as police officers.

This year, the Fraternal Order of Transit Police said that its ranks are 25% smaller than budgeted, despite an influx of recruits, as officers continue to leave for jobs at Amtrak, Temple University, or other law enforcement agencies in the region.