L.A. Transit Strike Affects 450,000

Stories from the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press,
the New York Times and the Washington Post

L.A. Feels Bite of Transit Drivers' Strike

LOS ANGELES – A transit strike that could inflict serious hardships on nearly a half-million of this city's poorest residents began in earnest today, as thousands of bus and commuter rail drivers demanding better wages and benefits did not report for duty to begin the work week, the Washington Post reported.

Los Angeles, which sprawls for 460 square miles and worships the automobile, also has the nation's second-largest public transit system. Parts of its economy and many of its minority communities depend on bus service. It is vital to the city's huge manufacturing and service industries, ferrying garment workers downtown, nannies to Beverly Hills and store clerks to the malls of the San Fernando Valley.

The strike began early Saturday, but since ridership is so low on weekends, the full force of it did not hit the city until this morning.

Some commuters walked miles to reach the overcrowded routes of a few private buses hired by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Taxi companies were deluged with calls. Freeways were even more crammed than usual. And some workers with long commutes simply had no way to get to their jobs. Yet in wealthier sections of this stratified city, no one seemed to notice that no buses were running.

Julian Hernandez, 29, spent the morning struggling to reach the construction site where he works. "I've been waiting for over an hour. I'm not sure a bus is coming," he said. "I may just not go to work."

On the same corner, Juan Perez, 40, was running late for the start of his shift at a textile factory downtown. "I can't wait much longer, so I may try to get a group of people together to split a taxi fare." Moments later, someone in a Chrysler LeBaron pulled up to the curb and offered him and four other strangers a ride.

At a midday rally, a group that represents the city's bus riders gathered outside of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors headquarters to denounce the transit authority and to urge elected officials to take steps that would end the strike before some riders starting losing jobs or money.

Nearly 70 percent of the city's 450,000 daily bus riders earn less than $15,000 a year.

"We have people literally getting up and trying to walk to work somehow," said Eric Mann, a leader of the group. "All over the city today, poor families will have to make choices like, 'Does my child go to school or do I go to work? Or do I sacrifice two hours of my pay to take a taxi?'‚"

Transit officials attempted to return to the bargaining table today, but the United Transportation Union, which represents about 4,500 bus and commuter rail drivers, said it had no plans to resume negotiating until the transit authority showed more signs of compromise. By some estimates, the strike could cost the city $2 million a day.

The two sides had been sparring for months over salaries, overtime pay and work rules. Strike deadlines had been extended twice. Talks finally collapsed late Friday night, despite pleas from California Gov. Gray Davis (D) and other elected officials to work out a deal. Unions representing bus mechanics also are supporting the strike, which is the second to shut down public transit in Los Angeles in the past six years.

The MTA has proposed giving drivers a wage increase, but it is insisting on cutting overtime costs by 15 percent and relying more on part-time employees. It also has been trying to get some bus drivers to accept four-day work weeks during which they would be on duty for 12 hours but get paid for 10 hours.

MTA officials say the cuts are necessary because significant budget shortfalls are coming, and they cannot impose more rate increases on riders.

But bus drivers say they have made too many concessions in recent labor contracts. Transit officials say that, on average, bus drivers earn about $50,000 a year. The union contends the only way that some drivers can ever reach that level is by working overtime on weekends and holidays.

Other organizations in the city are accusing the transit authority of squandering hundreds of millions of dollars on lightly used subway and rail systems at the expense of heavily used and often late and overcrowded bus lines. The MTA is under a federal court order to improve service to riders.

At this point, both sides are taking a hard line. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, the MTA chairwoman, told reporters on Sunday the union was "thumbing its nose at taxpayers and riders." Meanwhile, picketing union members have blocked the transit authority from getting some privately contracted buses on routes.

And riders sound divided over the strike. Some know their bus drivers well from riding with them every day and say they empathize with their fight to hold on to their wages, despite the inconvenience of the transit shutdown. But others who are now stranded have lost patience with drivers' demands.

"They could have compromised instead rather than letting us all suffer," said Vern Wright, 44, as he waited for an emergency city shuttle to take him to work.

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L.A. Transit Strike Is a Workday Headache

LOS ANGELES -- Compton Chester stood on Wilshire Boulevard, squinting in the morning sun, craning his neck for the bus that never came, the New York Times reported.

"I don't have a clue what I'm going to do," said Mr. Chester, a 29-year- old office assistant for an entertainment company who has no car and depends on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus for his 45- minute commute from Koreatown to West Los Angeles. "I feel foolish standing here. It's like waiting for Godot."

Mr. Chester was hardly alone this morning as the third day and the first work day of a countywide public transportation strike left half a million commuters in the nation's second-largest city stranded without regular bus and subway service and dependent on a catch-as-catch-can network of smaller regional bus lines, car pools, taxis and their own tired feet. Transportation officials reported a 5 percent increase in morning rush hour freeway traffic, taxi drivers said business had doubled and streets were clogged.

But unlike New York, for example, where commuters of all socioeconomic groups depend on public transportation and are affected in a strike, Los Angeles has a transit system used primarily by the poorest residents, including the legions of maids, janitors, nannies and service workers who commute from East Los Angeles to the gated enclaves of the Westside. Nearly 70 percent of the system's riders here have household incomes under $15,000 a year, nearly three-quarters of bus riders are black or Hispanic, and half do not have a car, truck or motorcycle in their household.

"It's sad," said Kelly Taylor, 23, a security guard trying to get from midtown to Universal City in the San Fernando Valley to pick up his paycheck at his company's headquarters. He said he might give up and go home, but was worried about how he will get to his job at a Jewish school near Beverly Hills on Tuesday. "I'd have to call my sister and get a ride," he said. "I can't really miss work."

Some 4,300 bus drivers and subway and light rail operators walked off the job Friday night in a strike against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the regional agency that administers a public transit system covering 1,400 square miles with 2,000 buses, the nation's second-largest fleet after New York's, plus 59 miles of subway and light rail track. About 1,800 mechanics and 650 clerks honored the picket lines. Among the major sticking points was a plan to cut overtime pay for senior drivers and to require some 400 drivers to work four 10-hour days without overtime in an effort to help close a projected operating shortfall of $430 million over the next decade.

"Our members deal with the riders every day and they care about them," said Goldy Norton, a spokesman for the United Transportation Union, which represents the drivers. "But you can't expect that in the greatest boom we've had in years our members should take what amounts to an average 15 percent pay cut."

The average driver earns about $50,000 a year, but $7,000 of that typically comes from overtime and working holidays and weekends, and union officials say the agency's proposed wage increases of 8.1 percent over three years would not make up the difference in lost overtime. The unions have sought 4 percent increases for each of three years.

But Marc Littman, a spokesman for the Transportation Authority, said the agency was willing to drop the overtime proposal if the union came up with other ways for saving an estimated $2 million a year in overtime payments out of the agency's $2.5 billion annual budget. Labor accounts for 70 percent of the agency's costs. The authority also is seeking the right to hire more part-time workers and newer drivers at lower wages, which the union also resists.

"If they don't like our ideas, then come up with some of their own," Mr. Littman said. "They've got to give us something."

Union officials said this morning that they were waiting for a formal invitation from state mediators before resuming talks at a Pasadena hotel. But late today, the transit authority said the union had agreed to return to the bargaining table on Tuesday morning.

The bus and subway system here has about 1.5 million boardings a day, compared with about 6 million a day in the New York City system, and virtually none of it was operating today. The agency had hoped to operate five "lifeline" routes along major arteries using private contractors, but those drivers honored the union picket lines, and the plan fell through. The separate Metro Link regional commuter rail system and bus lines in surrounding cities like Santa Monica were unaffected, and some were providing extra service to help take up the slack.

But most regular riders were out of luck, and Mayor Richard J. Riordan last week implored residents to "open up their hearts" and pick up people stranded on street corners. Caltrans, the state transportation agency, announced that it would suspend highway repair work during peak travel periods for the duration of the strike.

The transit strike is the seventh in Los Angeles in the last 28 years, what is believed to the be the highest number among big city transportation systems. The last was in 1994 and lasted nine days.

Brian Taylor, an associate professor of urban planning and associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles noted that transit ridership in Los Angeles was much higher than public perception would have it.

"It can be almost callous to say, how does a strike affect the regional economy," Professor Taylor said. "The significant effect is obviously on the people who are living at the margin. They're mostly going to make do. In poorer neighborhoods, there are extensive systems of car- sharing and informal taxi service." But, he added, "Unlike auto workers and car owners, here you have an unusual situation where the consumer of the product is on average much poorer than the operator, and there really is a cost to the population served by this system."

Mr. Chester, the commuter, who cannot come close to affording a daily cab ride of $20 each way, said he sympathized with the drivers' concerns to a point.

"It's really put me in a bad situation," he said. "I understand that they have to maintain their standards of living and keep their heads above and whatever. But when something like this happens, it also really shows how close people like me are to the edge."

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