Divisions Persist as MTA Talks Resume 

A primary obstacle is differences over wage and benefit
 guarantees if the agency is further split up.

LOS ANGELES -- Talks between striking bus drivers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority resumed Thursday, with the two sides still at odds over the transit agency's future direction, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The drivers' United Transportation Union wants to maintain existing protections against further privatization of suburban bus service, believing that legislation recently signed by Gov. Gray Davis will not give it the same safety net that its current contract provides.

The MTA's management wants to keep open the option of creating a new transit zone in the San Fernando Valley, or expanding or creating a new one in the San Gabriel Valley. Despite the resumption of talks, it was clear that the momentum that had looked so promising earlier in the week was gone.

The bus and rail operators put forward a formal contract proposal Wednesday, but MTA officials described it as "a step backward."

"We did not reject it, but it is a step backward," said Marc Littman, an MTA spokesman. "We are disappointed that it doesn't meet our needs."

Littman said the latest MTA offer includes a 2.7% pay raise over each of the next three years, and pension improvements.

In return, the MTA is asking the union to reduce overtime, accept full-time job slots that can be converted to part-time positions, and scrap what transit agency managers call "antiquated work rules," such as a requirement that no one in MTA yards can do work requiring a screwdriver except a bona fide mechanic.

Negotiators on both sides say the issue of wage and benefit guarantees in the event of a further breakup of the nation's second largest bus system is still a big obstacle to an agreement.

According to sources, the MTA wants to remove provisions of the last contract protecting union jobs, contending that legislation signed last weekend by Davis provides adequate protection. The drivers union insists that it needs the extra protection extended by its last contract.

Meanwhile, MTA chief Julian Burke asked state mediators Thursday to move the contract talks from the Pasadena Hilton to a "more professional" location and establish a formal bargaining schedule.

Burke complained that "our negotiating team has spent countless hours and days sitting around waiting for the union to negotiate."

But Dean Fryer, spokesman for the California Department of Industrial Relations, said state mediators don't have the authority to change the meeting's location or set the format. Also Thursday, beleaguered mechanics union chief Neil Silver, who broke with the drivers union over the contracting-out protections, was still trying to fend off a barrage of criticism from other labor leaders.

Silver asked his members Tuesday to go back to work for seven days while he continued to try to hammer out a contract. Silver, who pushed the governor hard to sign the bill, said Davis in turn requested that he ask his members to return to work.

Nearly all of the union's 1,860 MTA mechanics remained off the job Thursday. The drivers also refused Davis' request, and reaffirmed their commitment not to return to work without a contract at a raucous rally Wednesday.

Silver, who is up for reelection as president in November, was at the Pickwick Center in Burbank on Thursday, personally handing out strike benefit checks and doing a little politicking with members.

In addition to distributing $100 strike benefit checks, Silver kissed a baby, shook numerous hands and with each check handed members a letter designed to set "the record straight" regarding the Davis bill signing. The document attacks James Williams, head of the drivers union, for not joining him in asking workers to return to their MTA jobs.

Silver called the Williams-organized rally at a downtown arena Wednesday "more like a revival than a union meeting," and called a voice vote by drivers rejecting a proposal that they return to work "a slap in the face of the governor."

Some mechanics, as well as members of other unions, have been predicting that Silver will have trouble getting reelected.

"My membership knows me," said the combative 56-year-old union chief. " . . . My members will decide my fate."

---

L.A. Hospital Workers Strike

LOS ANGELES -- Nurses, staff and about a quarter of the doctors went on strike at a major public hospital Thursday in the most dramatic job action yet by 47,000 Los Angeles County employees who are threatening a countywide strike, the Associated Press reported.

The one-day walkout forced Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center to send new trauma cases elsewhere and close outpatient clinics.

It came in the third week of a transit strike that has left 450,000 regular bus and train riders without public transportation. Talks resumed Thursday, but the two sides were still far apart. Drivers on Wednesday rejected Gov. Gray Davis' request that they return to work without a contract for a cooling-off period.

The Service Employees International Union, meanwhile, began rolling walkouts after talks with the county collapsed Friday. Employees in public works, welfare offices and about a dozen clinics have staged one-day walkouts, and the union is threatening a walkout by all 47,000 members if no agreement is reached by Wednesday.

Thursday's walkout at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center sharply illustrated the stakes of a possible Oct. 11 strike.

Officials said 1,250 of 1,997 day staff did not come to work Thursday. The rest scrambled to take care of 197 patients.

"You supposed to help the sick. That's their job,'' said Debbie Foster, 41, a knee-replacement patient who rolled herself in a wheelchair past chanting pickets. She said she waited hours for attention during the night.

"I had to walk on my crutches back and forward to the nurses' station asking about my medication and they didn't do it until about 2 o'clock this morning,'' Foster said.

The striking nurses said they were concerned about understaffing and want a 15.5 percent raise over three years; the county is offering 9 percent.

Janine Thornton, 42, waited in the lobby to see her husband, who was robbed and shot Monday night. She said she saw his nurse out on the picket line.

"I can't see a nurse walking out on patients,'' she said, but added, "I'm still on their side. ... Four years, they haven't had a raise.''

On the picket line, nurse-midwife Melva Brown grappled with the same issue.

"Yes, we are worried,'' Brown said. "But at the same time, there's care for the caregiver, you know?''

UTU Main Page