Port Authority bus-trolley operators would receive four wage increases within 37 months under terms of a proposed contract to be put to a union ratification vote Sunday.

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By Jan. 1, 2012, the pact would raise hourly pay by a total of $2.67 an hour, to about $26, and cover the majority of 2,300 rank-and-file operators at the top of the pay scale.

Overall, they would receive compounded increases of 3 percent effective Jan. 1, followed by 2 percent, 3 percent and 3 percent raises on Jan. 1 of each following year.

Details of the agreement, hammered out over four days in Washington, D.C., before some of the nation's top labor leaders, were revealed yesterday when officials of Local 85, Amalgamated Transit Union, distributed a seven-page letter to their members, who also include mechanics, maintenance personnel and a separate bargaining unit of first-level supervisors.

Union members are to vote at sessions scheduled for 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland, a schedule set up to accommodate employees working shifts.

If the union approves the pact, the eight-member authority board will meet later next week to consider it.

The pact mirrors many recommendations made in August by a state-appointed fact-finder.

But it is a four-year contract instead of three; continues a controversial $500-a-month "pension supplement" for some who retire early; and provides fully paid, lifetime health care benefits for a number of employees who, because of their age and years of service, would have been forced to work longer or pay part of the premiums out of their own pockets.

The short- and long-term cost implications of the contract have not been disclosed. Neither authority Chief Executive Officer Steve Bland nor Local 85 President-Business Agent Patrick McMahon returned phone calls yesterday.

While County Executive Dan Onorato last week said he believed that the tentative agreement addressed some of the growing legacy costs that have concerned both him and authority management, he, too, declined to comment yesterday.

Mr. Onorato has been withholding $27.7 million in drink and car rental taxes that the Port Authority needs to qualify for state funding and remain in operation beyond the end of this month.

The agreement incrementally increases the union employees' contribution for health care from the current 1 percent to 3 percent of base pay by Jan. 1, 2011, which is what management and non-represented authority employees are already paying.

It also increases the union employees' pension contribution from the current 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent of wages in any year in which the authority's contribution to the Local 85 pension plan exceeds $20 million.

Retirees whose pensions are $10,400 a year or less are to receive a $100-a-month increase.

Here are other highlights and changes from the fact-finder's report and from a contract that the authority board unilaterally adopted and intended to impose on Local 85 on Monday until the four days of hard bargaining at the International AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington Nov. 22-26 produced the latest tentative agreement:

• The proposal contains a union cost-saving proposal that recognizes Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, President's Day, Good Friday and Veterans Day as "minor holidays" and gives the authority the right to set and adjust service based on lower ridership on those days.

• A management-union committee is to be established to deal with employee absenteeism. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Aug. 4 that employees who were on leave or reporting off work increased from 6 percent to 11 percent of the work force between 2002 and 2007, including up to 50 employees habitually absent anywhere from 40 to 60 days a year.

• A "Service System Design Committee" is to be formed to address management plans to dramatically reconfigure system service starting next year. It would change some traditional routes that have been in operation since the authority began in 1964.

Union employees will retroactively receive wage increases to which they would have been entitled as a result of normal job progression and benefits that were frozen as of July 1, when the previous contract expired.

A copy of the letter dated yesterday and distributed to members of Local 85 outlining the tentative agreement is available at www.post-gazette.com.