MTA Strikers Rally in Day 6
More than 2,000 union members march on transit agency

Part 1 of 2

LOS ANGELES -- Patients canceled medical appointments, students struggled to get to school, and transit-using workers called in sick or missed paydays as the human toll continued to mount Thursday in the 6-day-old strike that has shut down the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's bus and rail lines, the Los Angeles Times reported.

With Mayor Richard Riordan still in France and more than 2,000 union members took part in a march on the MTA's ornate $480-million headquarters, negotiations between transit agency officials and striking drivers never got going.

For the principals on both sides, rhetoric replaced give-and-take over the bargaining table Thursday.

"Are you going to accept them taking $23 million from you?" Miguel Contreras, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, asked a large crowd of chanting, placard-waving union members who assembled in front of the MTA headquarters.

One of the most contentious issues in the strike is the MTA's demand that unions yield $23 million in overtime and other savings over the next three years to help meet a deficit that is expected to grow to more than $400 million over the next 10 years.

"No, hell, no," the crowd roared in response.

Later, MTA directors fired back, chiding the unions for holding a rally when they could be sitting at the bargaining table.

Negotiations are expected to resume today. But a wide gap exists between cost-cutting proposals and what the unions are indicating they will accept.

The strike has shut down the nation's second-largest bus service and idled Metro Rail light rail and subway trains, disrupting service to 450,000 daily bus and rail passengers. Most of the daily riders are low-income wage earners who depend on public transit. Among the riders are seniors, the disabled and large numbers of public school students.

In fact, the strike's impact on working-class families was hitting at a level as basic as the bus itself, interrupting bus riders' access to health services, schooling and their livelihoods.

Cancellations at county health clinics have been running twice as high as normal this week. Some health centers were being hit harder than others.

There were so many strike-related cancellations at the county's Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center in Van Nuys that nurses were screening calls and doing triage by telephone.

Patients with less severe medical problems were being rescheduled, while nurses arranged taxi vouchers for the more seriously ill.

At the county's Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, 45% of the patients scheduled for appointments at the diabetes clinic failed to show up Wednesday. County health workers reported that 51 patients canceled appointments Wednesday at the H. Claude Hudson Comprehensive Health Center south of downtown, with the pattern continuing into Thursday.

"That is double the normal number," said Sharon Wanglin, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Health Services. "The strike has had a significant impact."

At the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center on the Eastside, one of the nation's busiest hospitals, a hospital spokeswoman said many outpatient visits were being rescheduled for next week because patients couldn't make their appointments.

On Thursday morning the curb along the busy MTA bus stop outside the hospital, known to locals as Big County, was devoid of buses but lined instead with cars and shuttles. People showing up for appointments at the outpatient clinic said they made special arrangements with friends and relatives who had cars.

Margarita Romero, a small, visually impaired woman who looks much younger than her 28 years, was one of those waiting with a friend.

Romero said she cannot see well enough to read or drive, but she has managed to enroll in computer classes at an occupational school.

She said she has been missing classes since the buses stopped running. But she has managed to keep her job.

Despite her difficulty in seeing, Romero said, she rides a bike for 25 minutes along busy streets in Huntington Park to get to her job stocking shelves at a Pic 'N' Save.

"In the nighttime it's hard," she said. "I have to go in a big street where there's lots of light. But then it's hard because the light bothers me a lot. It shines in my eyes and makes it difficult to see."

Early Thursday, Romero got a ride to the hospital to check out severe stomach pains she was experiencing.

She arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m., about two hours early for her appointment, because her roommate had to get to her job in Carson.

The physician she saw told her she might have an ulcer.

Dr. James Mays, a family physician who operates a clinic in South-Central Los Angeles and another in Inglewood, estimated his patient load is down 35%.

"The longer this goes on, the worse it will become," Mays said.

He has joined with other physicians, churches and community groups in an effort to help transit-dependent residents fill prescriptions and get to medical appointments.

"We are going to ask for volunteers from the community, particularly churches, to take the ill to doctor's appointments," he said.

At Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, located across the street from a Metro Rail subway station at Sunset Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, registered nurse Chris Baker said one doctor in the orthopedic clinic had nine canceled appointments on Monday, a very high number for the hospital.

"Today no-shows have gone down, but there is still a real problem with patients getting in late," said Baker, whose unit treats children for a wide range of problems, from broken bones to birth defects.

The delays of an hour or more were having a "huge, huge impact" because bottlenecks were developing to see doctors or get services, such as X-rays.

"It's been a nightmare," Baker said.

Childrens Hospital has been running shuttles to Union Station to pick up health care workers stranded there with no way to get to the Hollywood campus. The shuttles fill up so fast that hospital workers often have to wait half an hour for another shuttle.

In addition to health problems, absenteeism appeared to be commonplace as employees struggled to get to work by hitchhiking with family members, walking or riding bicycles.

At Los Angeles International Airport, workers were calling in sick and employers appear to be facing a high rate of absenteeism. And students at Los Angeles schools continue to have trouble making class.

Sheri Madison, who supervises customer service workers at American Airlines who help passengers find missing or misplaced luggage, said many of her workers were not able to get to work because of the strike.

"We usually have nine people. We are down to three," she said. "It's hard on us, but we don't let the passengers know--yet."

Rudolfo Cortez supervises workers who clean the airport.

"A lot of people are saying they are sick, when the real problem is transportation," he said.

Getting to school was a problem for B.J. Johnson, a senior at Hamilton High School.

"I'm late everywhere I go, to work and to school," the 18-year-old Johnson said, as he hurried down Pico Boulevard at 7:45 a.m. He was due at school at 8 a.m. but doubted he would make it.

Johnson usually catches an MTA bus from his home in West Los Angeles directly to school. These days he takes Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus--one of the eight municipal bus lines still operating in Los Angeles--and must then walk a mile.

Margarita Guerra, a nanny, has seen her already complicated life turned upside down by the strike.

Guerra recently lost her apartment in Los Angeles and moved in with her daughter in Santa Ana. She was just trying to figure out how to make the commute when the bus strike began.

Guerra couldn't get to work Monday or Tuesday. Now she is staying with her son in Koreatown. He gave her a ride down Pico to Robertson Boulevard Thursday morning, where her employer, Vivian Lurie, a personal manager, met her and drove her the rest of the way.

"I haven't the slightest idea how I will get home," she sighed.

"It's a big problem," Lurie said. "I had to take my 4-year-old daughter in to work Monday, and Tuesday had to get someone to do me a favor after school."

At the union rally, there was a large delegation of state lawmakers, Los Angeles City Council members and other elected officials.

During the rally, Arnold Deltoro, a striking MTA mechanic, cheered while his son, Joshua, 4, rode on his shoulders.

"This strike is about fighting for the betterment of our children," he said. Deltoro said he is striking because the MTA wants to "take away what we've got" in pay and benefits, something the father of three said he cannot afford to give up.

Riordan came in for a razzing, with marchers chanting, "Where is the mayor? Where is the mayor? We need him here."

Peter Hidalgo, Riordan's press secretary, said that, despite his travels, the mayor "is fully up to speed" with the negotiations.

Hidalgo and others criticized the unions for demonstrating when they should have been talking.

Little more than an hour after the march ended, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, chairwoman of the MTA board, urged the United Transportation Union to get back to negotiations.

She said the union had managed to extend the strike by another day by holding a rally and march rather than sitting down at the bargaining table and coming to some kind of agreement.

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