MTA - Special Report

MTA Special Report

MTA drivers feel the pinch of three weeks without a payday

LOS ANGELES -- As day 21 of the punishing transit strike came and went Friday, some drivers said they were depending increasingly on food banks and scrambling to make house and rent payments, sometimes unsuccessfully, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

At the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bus yard at 6th Street and Central Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, driver Peter Bueras Jr., 32, said he is giving up his home and maybe his car.

Bueras, who has six children under 10, said, "I am going to move back in with my parents, my wife is going to move back in with her parents to cut the costs."

As for his car, Bueras said, "I am going to end up selling it before I lose it." But Bueras said he will do whatever it takes to win the strike.

Mario Garcia, 54, walking beside Bueras on the picket line, said he already has missed a house payment.

"I have called my mortgage company that I am on strike and that I can’t get my payment this month," said Bueras, who is eligible for up to $600 a month in strike benefits. He and other drivers also said they have begun depending on a food bank.

"We are going to stay here as long as it takes so we can get a fair contract," Garcia said.

James Williams, leader of the 4,400-member United Transportation Union, arrived hours late at the Pasadena Hilton on Friday evening to resume negotiations. Asked by reporters where he had been, he said, "I have to do other things than negotiate here.

"I have to make sure there is some money for them this weekend," Williams said, referring to strike benefits. "I have to make sure there is food. I made sure the food banks are going to be open next week."

With negotiators on both sides worn out after a week of rallies, news conferences and on-again, off-again talks, negotiations were at such a standstill that MTA chief Julian Burke described the situation as "Square Minus 1."

"It doesn’t look to me like any progress has been made," Burke said during a break in talks that ended early Friday.

The drivers and mechanics are bargaining over work rules, pay, benefits, overtime and the length of workdays.

On another front, labor problems that once appeared to threaten Metrolink seemed less intense than previously reported.

Metrolink Strike Preparations Denied

John F. Harren, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 986, sent a letter to David Solow, chief executive officer of Metrolink, disavowing comments by Teamster organizer Don Thornsburg that mechanics servicing Metrolink trains were preparing a strike.

The negotiations involve a new contract the Teamsters are hammering out on behalf of the mechanics, whom they agreed to represent earlier this year. The mechanics work for Bombardier, a Canadian company with a contract to service Metrolink trains.

"The ongoing negotiations have been positive; no strike vote has been taken or even contemplated, no sanction has been filed for with any other union entity," Harren wrote.

Friday marked the first payday that strikers have missed. They received paychecks two weeks ago, for work completed before the strike.

The strike, already the longest in 21 years, will become the third-longest in MTA history if it lasts through the weekend, as appears likely.

The longest strike, against the MTA’s predecessor agency, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, lasted 68 days in 1974.

On Friday, bus yards that normally are busy with the coming and going of some of the 2,000 buses the MTA runs on an average weekday were eerily silent, as they have been since the strike began.

In the San Fernando Valley, about 20 drivers kept vigil outside Chatsworth’s Division 8 MTA yard Friday morning, vowing that they were in it for the long haul.

"We’ve decided we’re not going to let the company break us," said 35-year veteran driver Bob Riccio.

Another in the group was Les Vance, 53, an entry-level driver who said he makes $10 per hour and does not get paid during the split times that have become the strike’s central issue.

The way Vance sees it, the union has compromised enough over the years. "We gave them part-time drivers because they said they were in financial trouble," he said. "We gave them a week’s vacation back, because they said they had financial trouble. Now they say they still need more money? No way."

Vance has worked for the MTA for only 11 months, but he worked from 1969 to 1992 as a driver for the transit agency’s predecessor, the RTD. Both he and Riccio, 60, remember the bitter RTD strike of 1974, which they said drivers waged at great personal financial cost.

"That was the last big strike I saw, and I saw people lose their homes," Vance said. "But we’re going to stick this out. We think it’s worth it."

The scene outside the bus yard bore Vance out: Union members have installed a large barbecue, wooden pallets to fuel it, a recreational vehicle stocked with cases of coffee creamer and other pickets’ supplies, and even a crate of vinyl records that strikers listen to on an old phonograph.

ATU official says he’d ask members to cross picket line again

LOS ANGELES -- Every mechanic knows that a rough idle means trouble, and according to a report in the Los Angeles Times, union President Neil H. Silver knew what to do last week when his get-back-to-work request backfired -- leaving some of his 1,860 mechanics, who had been idled by the Los Angeles bus drivers’ strike, agitated and fuming.

All but a handful of those belonging to Silver’s Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1277, refused to follow their leader’s request to cross striking Metropolitan Transportation Authority drivers’ picket lines.

There were rumblings that the rank and file were angry enough to vote Silver out of office Nov. 7 when Local 1277 holds its first election in three years.

So, like a good mechanic, Silver pulled out his tools and started the repair work.

First was the letter to members explaining why he took the unprecedented step of asking them to go back to work while their compatriots in the drivers union were still striking.

Then came the first strike-benefit checks--modest $100 payments welcomed nonetheless by mechanics who have not been paid since they walked off the job three weeks ago.

And finally there was the hand-shaking, back-patting and baby-kissing that took place when Silver personally handed out some of the checks to union members gathered Thursday in Burbank.

A jovial character known for his jokes and his plaid sport coats, the portly, Bronx-born labor leader knows when to rev the engine.

"There are a lot of Neils," he said of the disarmingly laid-back, self-deprecating and friendly persona that has kept people laughing outside the Pasadena hotel rooms where contract talks are being held.

"But there’s a Neil that is a raging maniac," he said. "That Neil has no sense of humor at all."

Silver, who lives in Granada Hills with his wife of 25 years, has been a union man since 18. That’s when he signed on with the Merchant Marine and joined the Seaman’s Union.

"I was a kid, and the union gave me a work ethic. It taught me to be responsible," he said. The union also put some money in his pocket.

"My father was working in a slaughterhouse during the day and in a band at night," he said. "There I was, 18 and making three times what he was making, because of the union."

Those around him break out in guffaws when Silver jokes about a stint in the Navy during the 1965 Vietnam buildup.

"I was aboard a destroyer called the Brinkley Bass, and somehow we cut the guided missile destroyer USS Waddell in half," he said. "The bad part of it was the Waddell was the flag ship of the 7th Fleet. And that was just one of the crashes. We limped back to Long Beach and got a new bow on the Brinkley Bass. Then we ran the new bow into Pier 15 and cut it in half."

Silver ended a second stint with the Merchant Marine in 1974 by joining his uncle--who was a bus driver with the old Southern California Rapid Transit District--on the picket line for a 10-week strike. A short time later, Silver landed an RTD job himself as a bus cleaner.

On his first day on the payroll, he made waves by complaining about an RTD security guard who roughly shoved him away when he got too close to a pile of fare boxes. Within days, co-workers had appointed Silver to be a union steward.

"I was three weeks into the job. I was the only steward in the union who was a new hire still on probation," he said.

Silver slowly worked his way up the union ladder, becoming a vice president in 1980 and president in 1987. He was defeated for a new three-year term by 57 votes in 1991. "It was an involuntary sabbatical," he said with a laugh.

Losing and going back to work as a $19-an-hour bus cleaner was a humbling experience, Silver said. "I took the job because I wasn’t about to give away the MTA pension I’d negotiated," he said.

He was reelected president in 1994 and 1997. These days he earns $65,000 a year as Local 1277 president--21% more than what the highest-paid member earns from the MTA. Along with the MTA mechanics, the union represents several hundred other bus mechanics in Palm Springs and Riverside.

Those who have faced Silver at the bargaining table say they have respect for him.

"Neil is probably a complicated individual. He has a great sense of humor, but he fights for his members," Tom Webb, the MTA’s chief labor negotiator, said Friday. "He’s an honest guy. He’s willing to be creative to try and solve problems."

Such creativity may have led to Monday’s return-to-work request.

Silver said making the recommendation was the hardest thing he has ever done. He did it, he said, to keep a pledge that both his union and the bus drivers’ union made to Gov. Gray Davis.

On Sept. 30, the governor had signed pro-union legislation, SB 1101. That measure requires that the MTA abide by all existing labor contracts if the huge agency is broken up to create smaller transit zones, as suburban leaders in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere have proposed.

Silver said he assured the governor’s representative, Stephen Smith, director of the state Department of Industrial Relations, that mechanics would return to work for a seven-day "cooling-off period" as a gesture of good faith if the bill was signed.

"I feel ashamed I had to do it," Silver said of his call to resume work. "But I don’t regret it. I’d do it again."

Later, a letter to the drivers’ United Transportation Union members over the signature of its president, James A. Williams, denounced Silver’s action as "shocking, disgusting and dishonorable."

Mechanics walking picket lines with drivers said they took heat from them after Silver’s get-back-to-work request. But they say they continue to stand behind their man.

"He did the right thing. He definitely didn’t sell the membership out," said David Chamness, a Red Line subway mechanic who has worked for the MTA for 30 years. "You couldn’t ask for a better president. I don’t see anybody challenging him in next month’s election. I see Neil being reelected."

Jesse Gonzales, a bus mechanic, said Silver’s letter "told the whole story" and won over any doubting Local 1277 members. "The governor did us a favor; he did the governor a favor. Nobody blames Neil."

Back at the Pasadena hotel, Silver seemed to sense that. When a TV news cameraman interviewing him Friday said he needed to get a wide shot, the 5-foot-6, 220-pounder pulled open his sport jacket and, with a big grin, displayed his paunch.

The master mechanic was back in gear.

MTA transit officials frustrated as talks to resume

LOS ANGELES -- Dropped candy wrappers went uncleared from the beaches of Los Angeles County on Saturday as the workers who normally clean them joined a rolling walkout of county employees.

Across the county, a public transit strike was in its 22nd day Saturday, and the union representing 47,000 county workers -- from nurses to welfare office clerks -- continued to threaten a massive walkout if the county doesn’t restart negotiations with an acceptable proposal.

Talks resumed between officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the United Transportation Union, but no agreement was reached to send striking light rail and bus drivers back to their routes. They’ve been off the job since Sept. 16, stranding an estimated 450,000 regular commuters. Talks were set to resume Sunday afternoon.

"It’s a snail pace, and the snail’s going backwards," MTA spokesman Gary Wosk said.

Union spokesman Goldy Norton agreed that the two sides remained far apart.

"I think it’ll take pressure on both sides to try and figure out a solution, and I have no idea where that pressure might come from," Norton said.

For the county workers, no new talks have been scheduled between the county and the Service Employees International Union. The union wants a 15.5 percent pay raise over three years; the county has offered 9 percent.

The rolling walkouts, which started Monday, have hit services ranging from libraries to county clerk’s offices, which perform services including issuing birth certificates and marriage licenses.

On Friday, hundreds of health care workers refused to work at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance. With nearly 40 percent of its staff missing, the hospital shut the county’s busiest trauma center and rescheduled surgeries.

On Saturday, about 200 union members attended a two-hour rally at Venice Beach to show support for the one-day walkout by beach workers.

"The county continues to take the position that we have to call off our strike in order for them to sit down and bargain," said union spokesman Mark Tarnawsky.

He said the union won’t even consider that proposal.

"A strike is a bargaining tool. They are essentially telling county workers they do not have a right to strike," Tarnawsky said.

County workers planned to picket Sunday in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. County offices will be closed Monday for Columbus Day. Tarnawsky said walkouts were planned Tuesday for County-USC Medical Center, Olive View Medical Center and other health care facilities.

Los Angeles County operates on a budget that exceeds $15 billion. Nearly 10 million people depend on its array of public services.

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