Phil Matier: BART Strike Enters 4th Day; Pension-Health Care Costs Primary Issues

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — Bay Area Rapid Transit is still on strike, trains are not running and negotiations have entered their fourth day after Wednesday night's talks concluded with no deal.

They're still trying to hash out a deal, but they're still apart on a number of key issues. Much of Wednesday's talks had the union in an uproar over BART's possible imposing of a contract on its workers, which basically said if a deal isn't cut in two or three days that a deal would be put on that they'd have to live with.

A lot of time was spent getting BART to back off on that tactic (and they still haven't completely backed off), but pension and health care are still the tough primary issues.

It's tough to call if they'll resolve all of this by Monday. Pension and health care not only affects BART, but it affects the state and public employees all around as well.

With health care when they want you to start paying a percentage of your costs rather than a flat fee, that affects different workers in different ways.

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