Philadelphia Strikes Out

This posting is not about baseball, although the Phillys did lose to the NY Yankees in the 6th game of the World Series. The strike I am referring to is the SEPTA strike; these are the workers that keep the buses, trollies and subway/el train running. The strike began in the middle of the night Monday after the baseball game ended. Commuters coming in on the light rail were shocked to reach the subway and find it was not running. There are 35,000 public school children who use public transportation to get to school, and thousands more who attend private/parochial schools who walked, biked, skateboarded or found a car ride to school.
Apparently when the new contracts are negotiated every 4 years, terms are not met and the strike occurs. The length has varied from just a few days to 100 days. So how is the SEPTA strike affecting St. Francis Inn? One of the most obvious is the low numbers of senior citizens who are coming to eat. We had less than 50 seniors last night, compared to our usual 100. Since seniors can ride the buses for free, many of our guests who live more than a mile away depend on the buses to get them to the Inn. Likewise, we have had several of our most dependable daytime volunteers call in and say they could not come and help. The last two days there have been only 2 or 3 of us who have prepared the food, taking most of the 6 hours we have available before mealtime. The roads are in gridlock, because commuters are being forced to drive to work rather than take mass transit. As a result, pickups of the bread and baked goods are taking longer.
The strike has brought out the worst in people.There are all sorts of stories of road rage, motorists and cyclists battling out space, and people getting up at 3 am to make the commute. There are stories of kindness,too. A man told me this morning he was driving home yesterday and saw some elderly people standing on the street corner. He thought maybe they didn't know about the strike. So he rolled his window down and asked them if they knew the buses weren't running. They replied they were waiting for a cab as they had to go to the hospital. It turned out that the hospital was close to his home, and he ended up driving the couple to their destination.
We hope that a just mediation of the contract will occur very soon.