Imagine a public transit system heading for financial ruin, driven there in large part by the benefit package enjoyed by its union workers: a low retirement age coupled with health care-for-life for retirees and their families -- for which the workers and retirees pay little or nothing.

Unless things change, the community faces wholesale elimination of bus and rail routes or the agency will topple.

Sound like Pittsburgh? Only because you haven't heard how the story ends ...

The Chicago Transit Authority has faced many of the same issues challenging the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Yet in Chicago, the transit authority's 17 unions took a realistic look at the agency's financial future. To win support for increased transit funding, the unions agreed to a new contract that includes major financial concessions.

"We've demonstrated that the CTA's unions are doing their part to contain costs while seeing that our riders, the taxpayers and members of the Illinois state legislature are satisfied," said Darrell Jefferson, the former bus driver who heads Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241.

That's what union leaders had to say in Chicago. Here's some of what union leadership has said in Pittsburgh:

"We've fought to protect our benefits over the years," said ATU Local 85 President-Business Manager Patrick McMahon. "We're tired of people trying to push us into a race to go to the bottom."

His union members would have a long way to fall.

Port Authority bus drivers are the highest paid in the country when you adjust for regional differences in the cost of living. That conclusion came from two different studies of the Port Authority, the first by the Pennsylvania Transportation Funding & Reform Commission, led by PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler and appointed by Gov. Edward Rendell and legislative leaders from both parties.

A study by the Pennsylvania Economy League of Southwestern Pennsylvania last year confirmed the findings. (Chicago was No. 2, by the way.) The Economy League found that Port Authority union members enjoyed far more generous health-care benefits than Philadelphia transit workers, Pennsylvania state workers, Allegheny County workers and Port Authority managers. (My transit blog, www.NoCommuterLeftBehind.com, has a link to the study.)

Mr. McMahon's reaction: "I'm tired of all these people who want to play around with the numbers."

The Port Authority union's benefits include health care-for-life for retirees at a nominal contribution (less than $1.50 a day) and retirement provisions that allow most workers to retire with full benefits in their 40s or early 50s.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco studied trends in employer-provided health insurance in 2006 and found that, on average, employees over the past decade have paid about 25 percent of the premiums for family health coverage.

Port Authority union members, on the other hand, have paid about 3 percent of the premiums for family health-care coverage (equal to 1 percent of their base wage) since 2006. Before that, they paid nothing.

To stay solvent, the Port Authority wants to triple the amount union members pay for employer-provided health coverage, eliminate that coverage for future retirees and raise the retirement age to 60 with 25 years of service.

"If they can't move off of that, [a contract is] not going to happen," Mr. McMahon told the Post-Gazette in June, complaining about the Port Authority's focus on retirement and benefit issues. He accused authority officials of "playing the blame game as if their financial problems are all our fault, that we're overpaid."

But the Port Authority is not singling out the union in its reforms. Everyone else has already paid the price:

• State and local taxpayers (including bar patrons subject to the newly enacted Allegheny County drink tax) provide two-thirds of Port Authority funding and are paying more to keep transit rolling here and across the state.

• Transit riders have seen routes cut while paying one of the higher base fares in the country.

• Port Authority managers have seen health-care contributions go up and retiree health care eliminated.

ATU Local 85, whose wages and benefits account for two-thirds of the Port Authority budget, wants no part of it. But while contract concessions would be painful for union members, the alternative for them is worse -- route cuts and lost union jobs.

As Labor Day dawns, it's important to remember that organized labor doesn't always approach issues this way. With the domestic auto industry spiraling into disaster, United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger bucked naysayers in his own union to work with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler on creative ways to reduce their health-care liabilities. The agreements required serious UAW concessions and will trim about $1,000 from the cost of producing each new car.

"Our members, both active and retired, made some very difficult decisions in regards to real out-of-pocket sacrifices to help our employers remain competitive," Mr. Gettelfinger said in a February speech in Cleveland. "With the savings created by our agreements, we want to see the cars and trucks of tomorrow built with pride in the U.S.A."

And so they are. GM in June announced it was adding a third shift to its assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. The plant, often rumored to be on GM's closure list, instead is adding 1,400 new workers and will build GM's new compact.

"We acted in order to preserve jobs and to create incentives for new investments in the United States," Mr. Gettelfinger said.

But today's last word belongs to Pat McMahon:

"If they want to fight," he told the Post-Gazette in June, "we'll fight."