Details are emerging of the BART strike agreement: Workers negotiated significant pay and benefit increases during the final rounds of dicussions that brought the work stoppage to an end.
From the Chronicle's Michael Cabanatuan in the Chronicle: "BART workers scored 15.4 percent in raises in the four-year deal that settled the four-day strike late Monday night."
"The raises, which are 3.4 percent higher than BART management proposed Thursday in its final offer, which triggered the strike, include money to reimburse employees for picking up a portion of their pension contributions."
"And if BART, which provides 400,000 rides each weekday, sees ridership surge past projections, workers will get bonuses of up to $1,000 a year."
Those final increases are not going down well with some members of the BART board of directors, which will have to approve the contract.
From the Chronicle's Matier and Ross: "BART sweetened the pot for striking workers big time to finally reach a deal - boosting the value of its contract offer by more than 10 percent - but the agreement is getting a mixed reaction from the transit system's own Board of Directors."
"The riders, who bore the brunt of these two strikes, wanted us to stand firm. We let them down," said Director Zakhary Mallett, one of nine elected board members who will vote on the deal, along with the unions that walked out in July and again on Friday."
"Suffice to say that I am appalled and will not vote for it," said Mallett, who represents western Contra Costa County, northern Alameda County and part of San Francisco."
Speaking of strikes, Gov. Brown -- again -- is going to court to try and stop transit workers from walking out.
From the LAT's Anthony York: "For the second time this year, Gov. Jerry Brown will ask a court to block a transit strike in the San Francisco Bay Area."
"This summer, Brown convinced a federal court to put a 60-day hold on a proposed strike of the Bay Area Transit System, which operates the region’s rail system. That cooling off period was still not enough for BART workers and management to come to an agreement, but the two sides ultimately resolved their issues this week, after a four-day walkout."
"Now, the governor will ask a state court to prevent workers for AC Transit, which runs buses throughout the Bay Area, from walking out. A new report from a panel appointed by Brown found that a strike will cause “significant disruption in public transportation services and significant harm to the public’s health, safety and welfare.”
Meanwhile, back in Sacramento, that new double-the-cost computer system at the EDD is plagued with flaws and the claims of hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers are affected.
From the LAT's Ricardo Lopez, Marc Lifsher and Shan Li: "The agency initially said 80,000 unemployment claims were stalled when the software went online over Labor Day weekend. But internal emails obtained by The Times show the system was riddled with glitches that stopped payment to as many as 300,000 claimants."
"Now lawmakers want answers. The Assembly is setting up a hearing to determine what went wrong with a system that cost taxpayers $110 million, almost double the original estimate."
"Some blame the EDD's slow response to the problem that created the massive backlog of claims. Others are pointing fingers at a familiar name around the halls of Sacramento:Deloitte Consulting."
In a sign of the improving housing market, new foreclosure filings have dropped sharply.
From the LAT's Andrew Khouri: "Notices of default fell 21.1% from the second quarter and 58.6% from the same period last year, research firm DataQuick said Tuesday. Completed foreclosures dropped sharply as well, reaching the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2006."
"Lenders filed 20,314 default notices from July to September, the lowest amount since the first quarter of this year when a new series of state laws — known as the Homeowner Bill of Rights — went into effect. The laws restrict how banks conduct foreclosures within the state."
"Foreclosure starts peaked during the first three months of 2009 at 135,431. The crisis — which wreaked havoc on families, neighborhoods and the economy — has now greatly subsided."
