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BART SETTLEMENT CLOSED
A LITTLE MUSCLE FROM THE MAYOR
San Francisco Examiner September 10, 1997
Brown Gets Tough, and the BART Talks Get Going
No Water, No Coffee. No food.
Four three intense hours on Day 3 of the BART strike, Mayor Brown sat at the head of the conference table in his private office presiding over what he described as informal talks that he hopes will lead to a settlement.
To his left sat seven union representatives for striking workers; to his right, three BART board members carrying management’s message.
Brown offered the 10 no refreshments. He turned off the ornamental lights on a mini Eiffel Tower replica in his office, h oping to keep distractions at bay. Only once did someone dare leave the room to go the bathroom. When phone calls were made, they were made from the office, within earshot of the others.
Brown’s Agenda: Keep ‘em talking
The participants kept small talk to a minimum, they didn’t even touch on the Raiders’ last-seconds loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in front of a national TV audience the night before.
Instead, they concentrated on how to get back to the negotiating table.
“There was a common desire to settle the strike and get the trains rolling again,” Brown said.
He said the had one goal in mind when he’d sat everyone down in his office Tuesday: a commitment from both sides to kick-start the negotiations.
“e achieved that,” he said, in announcing that formal negotiations were to resume Tuesday evening in Oakland.
While Brown was key to bringing the two sides together, he wasn’t the only player in the room.
BART Board President Margaret Pryor, who only Monday called Brown’s first round of informal discussions at City Hall a political stunt, decided to join in on the mayor’s second day of talks. She was not available to explain her change of heart, but Brown said he had been on the phone with her at midnight,
urging her to attend.
Joining Prior were board members James Fang, a Brown ally and scion of the powerful San Francisco publishing family, and Dan Richard from Contra Costa County.
On the other side were Michael Haberberger, chief negotiator for the unions; Bill Lloyd, representing Service Employees International Union, Local 790, and the primary spokesman for the striking workers; and Robert Smith, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 president.
A History with Brown
Lloyd who at one time was the chief SEIU lobbyist at San Francisco City Hall, is well known by local politicians, and his union is very closely tied to Brown. Local 790 leadership boasts that the efforts of their members gave Brown the winning edge in his run for mayor. After the election, Local 790 fared
extremely well with its latest contract through Brown’s direct intervention.
Others for the labor side included negotiating team members and BART workers Mike Duff and Steve Chavez; Dennis Kazor, president of the BART chapter for the SEIU; and attorney Victor Chin, representing the ATU. Brown called Chin one of the sharpest negotiations he’d ever come across, saying he’d like her to
handle labor issues for The City.
Noticeably missing from the room was Ruth Blanco, the state mediator in the BART strike.
The unions opted to skip Blanco’s negotiating session Monday and met with Brown instead. A State mediator for 18 years, Blanco once was a union activist with the SEIU in Southern California, but in her role as mediator in this dispute she has taken a neutral stance.
While BART strikers have a negotiating committee with 30-plus members, observers close to the unions say only a handful - among them those who met this week with Brown - will emerge as the central players. Any other arrangement, they say, will prove to cumbersome to negotiate a settlement in the strike.
Controversial Director
To parlay BART’s position, Pryor’s role is central.
Pryor, representing Oakland as a BART director since 1980, has had more than her share of controversy, most recently with the State Fair Political Practices Commission, which announced that it might fine her up to $114,000 for allegedly failing to report campaign contributions if the charges are upheld.
In another, earlier matter, she was caught misusing a disabled parking placard and driving with an expired license. Tuesday, a uniformed BART security guard chauffeured Pryor to and from Brown’s office.
Tom Radulovich, a BART director serving San Francisco said Pryor had done a good job in bringing the board together during the strike and had shown leadership in settling BART’s agenda for negotiating.
August 13, 2002Pryor raised some eyebrows Monday, however, when she told reporters that she had shined off Brown’s first meeting because she was busy with unspecified “chores.”
And although Pryor, Fang and Richard sat across the table from the union representatives in Brown’s office, they will not be part of the formal negotiations; BART management puts its own negotiating team together.
As for Brown’s future role, that remains unclear. He said he is on standby if his services are requested.
The BART strike is not the first labor dispute in which Brown has inserted himself. His involvement in the last year alone helped end a San Francisco Symphony strike, a garbage strike and a potential Muni driver sick-out.
His success, he said, stems from a willingness to listen.
“I am like a therapist without a license,” he said.
Robert Morales, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 350, whose union waged a one-day strike against the garbage companies in San Francisco, said Brown could work magic in usher in a settlement.
“He makes you sit down and work at it,” Morales said, pointing to his own experience with Brown. “He participates but at the same time shows respect for both sides. You believe this guy’s trying to help; he has respect for us.”
He also gets the “parties to agree there is a potential danger to both sides . . . (and) makes you understand it is in the best interest of all to get a settlement,” Morales said.
Some critics say that Brown is grandstanding in the BART strike and that he undermined the official negotiating process. Brown defended his move, saying it was incumbent on him and other elected leaders whose constituents were affected by the walkout to get involved.
Said Brown: “I ran for this job to do this job.”
Now, the fate of the strike will determine whether his efforts paid off.
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