Strike worries loom

The SEPTA contract negotiation deadline is the end of this week, which has many people watching the current round of negotiations with bated breath. Relevent stories:

• The Inquirer did a rundown of the entire set of health care and benefit issues over the weekend.
  
• The Daily News tries to boil the issues down to a few Q's and A's.
  
• And here's the DN's profile of the negotiators running the current talks -- their personal histories, tough talk, and the like.

Notable to me is that SEPTA pays almost $1k per employee in health alone, and that that number is up more than 70% in the last four years; on the other side, TWU employees are not paid for sick leave (three days unpaid, then 50% of subsequent leave). I have no idea how these two factors offset one another, but it seems reasonable to me that concessions on the one might require some bending on the other.