As Black Friday shoppers crammed into the King of Prussia mall, a pro-union Santa stood vigil with striking Pennsylvania Turnpike toll collectors nearby on day three of their first-ever strike.

At 380 pounds, the bearded, 60-year-old retiree and friend of striking workers was the picture of Santa, albeit with a Teamsters shirt beneath his red coat and a picket sign shoved under his wide black belt.

"My deer will not cross a picket line," Drexel Hill resident Tom Anthony warned as he waved to motorists at the Valley Forge interchange. "It will be a sad Christmas if Santa cannot come to the Northeast."

Motorists will first have to get through tomorrow, when the Turnpike Commission will use managers and temporary workers to collect $2 for cars journeying home from Thanksgiving celebrations and $15 for commercial freight. The commission decided against waiving tolls all day tomorrow, one of the busiest days of the year.

"When we do have a traffic situation at an interchange, backing up the ramp down to the main line, we will waive the tolls," Turnpike Commission spokesman Bill Capone said yesterday.

Capone and striking workers expressed hope that the strike, sparked by a dispute over health benefits and job security, would end soon. The Teamsters contract - covering toll collectors, maintenance workers, and office staff in Locals 77 and 250 - expired in October 2003. There have been no talks since Wednesday.

The commission has suspended health benefits for about 2,000 workers, a common practice during strikes. The proposal rejected by workers offered management-level health insurance, an upgrade, with the caveat that it could be changed at any time during the contract.

The commission is also seeking to add more "supplemental" toll collectors - currently about 30 percent of the workforce in our region - who labor full time without sick pay or vacation benefits. The contract proposal also included a 2.5 percent raise annually for three years. The commission has rejected a worker proposal that the pay increase be retroactive to last year.

Teamsters representatives were unavailable for comment yesterday.

About 220 managers have been working 12-hour shifts at the tolls; they were joined for the first time yesterday by 40 temporary workers. The Turnpike Commission is paying an agency $16.25 an hour for each nonunion worker hired and expects to employ 30 more, Capone said.

Supplemental toll collectors, even those with five or six years on the job, are paid a base of $15.76 an hour. Workers at the Valley Forge interchange yesterday estimated that there are 93 supplemental workers and 240 "permanent" toll collectors in our region. Permanent toll collectors with three years of experience earn $18.69 an hour (plus overtime on holidays), paid vacations, and sick pay.

The dispute has caused a dilemma for some truckers. Many union drivers are not crossing the picket line, which is effectively 531 miles long. Nonunion truckers sympathize, but clutch eagerly at a cross-state toll of $15 - a $125 savings on the usual charge for a 40-ton rig.

"If I can run the entire turnpike for $15, I will do so gladly with a big smile on my face," said Lee Klass, 56, of Portland, Ore.

Klass later called back to say he had changed his mind. "If workers go out, they go out for a good reason," he said. "I would not cross a picket line. It's one of my core values."

Since deregulation of the industry, America's truckers, on average, work harder and earn less than they have during the last four decades, according to former trucker Michael Belzer, a labor-relations expert at the University of Michigan and author of the book Sweatshops on Wheels.

Even so, some truckers are ready to show solidarity with fellow Teamsters.

Gerald Sullivan of Northeast Philadelphia hauls the U.S. mail for Mail Contractors of America, an Arkansas-based firm. Sullivan, who recently helped fellow employees organize his shop with Teamsters Local 470 of Philadelphia, vowed yesterday to avoid the turnpike on his daily run to Springfield, Mass.

"The problem with the toll takers is the problem we are all having right now, " Sullivan said. "We are losing our benefits and our health care."

United Parcel Service drivers and package handlers are Teamsters, too. UPS spokesman Norm Black said yesterday that the workers' contract guarantees the privilege of avoiding a picket line. "We have the right to substitute management drivers, if need be, to keep things going," Black said.

State police have reported only sporadic and relatively minor problems on the picket line.

Yesterday afternoon, a group of about 50 pickets at the Valley Forge interchange briefly disrupted traffic, according to state police. Members of the group began exiting the turnpike about 5 p.m. and paid the $2 fare with pennies. Afterward, they picketed between the toll lanes and refused to heed calls from officers to disperse.

After he was identified as the leader of the group, authorities cited Mark Douglas Rowe, 43, of Elkins Park, for allegedly blocking the highway.

This article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 27, 2004 and was written by Jere Downs.