MTA Special Report

Members OK contract; MTA service to resume today

LOS ANGELES -- Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses will be back in service this morning for the first time in more than a month after an all-night round of negotiations, ending Tuesday morning and brokered by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, settled the third-longest transit strike in Los Angeles' history.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the deal, unanimously approved by the MTA board, was ratified Tuesday night by 92% of the members of the United Transportation Union who voted. It was embraced by weary bus drivers eager for a paycheck and by MTA directors, who said it still allowed them to achieve the $23 million in savings from bus and rail operators they had demanded from the outset.

"We've done it," Mayor Richard Riordan said at an early morning news conference at the Pasadena Hilton, where labor and management negotiators and mediators had been closeted in discussions.

James Williams, general chairman of the drivers union, characterized the 32-day labor dispute as a long, hard fight, but said, "It is time to move on; it is time to mend the fences. It is time to heal all our wounds."

Sleep-deprived MTA board members and labor leaders, who had been closeted in 24-hour discussions since early Monday, said both sides had to give to end the acrimonious strike, which frayed long-standing political alliances and disrupted the lives of 450,000 transit-dependent residents.

"In the end, victory is when everybody wins," Jackson told cheering members of the drivers union Tuesday night at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The civil rights leader, delivering a speech that was part sermon, prayer service, labor rally and get-out-the-vote pitch, insisted that after the long strike, drivers must move on to reconciliation and healing.

"This fight is about the dignity of working people," he said.

Union spokesman Goldy Norton said drivers "didn't get everything we wanted; they didn't get everything they wanted. It's a fair settlement. It protects our members."

But the new three-year contract continues to erode the transit union's clout by introducing more low-paid part-time drivers to the MTA work force. And the raise the 4,400 bus and train operators are slated to receive will not make up for the loss of 32 days of pay from the longest transit agency walkout in more than two decades.

For their part, the United Transportation Union and the mechanics and supervisors' unions that honored its picket lines were able to fend off the MTA's plans to spin off bus lines into new transit zones without the protection of existing union contracts. They also limited the number of part-time drivers who will be hired by the MTA.

Drivers reported mixed feelings, but in the end their sentiments may best have been summed up by a posting on a Web page dedicated to internal MTA gossip: "WE'RE BACK TO WORK YIPPIE."

Riders, who saw daily commutes double or triple in time and meager earnings eaten up by cab fares during the strike, also were relieved.

"Tomorrow? The bus!" cried Claudia Barrza, 26, of Whittier, who has been forced to beg rides from friends and family members to her job in a downtown Los Angeles dress shop. "It's been too hard on everybody," she said. "Some people lost their jobs."

The MTA--which spent $2.5 million on public relations and other efforts during the strike--will offer free rides for the first five days of renewed service, and holders of monthly passes for September can use them until the end of October. Buses are expected to begin to return to their routes this morning, with most lines running by nightfall. Subway and light-rail trains are not scheduled to resume service until Thursday.

But the mostly poor riders could get hit with a second dose of transit pain in the next few months, as the MTA board studies whether to raise fares for the first time in five years.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, the chairwoman of the board, said that because of savings from the contract, any fare hike will be "less than it could have been." Burke said she is hesitant to support a fare increase. The board, in fact, has declined to raise fares several times in the recent past.

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Agency Sought to Deal With Deficit

The protracted labor dispute was spawned by the MTA's push to win concessions from its drivers in order to balance its books and prepare for expansion of its rail programs. The agency argued that it faced an estimated $438-million operating deficit over the next 10 years.

And the MTA board boxed itself in by financing construction of its pricey subway and two light-rail lines through the issuance of billions of dollars in debt. Left with few alternatives to balance its operating budget, the board must look to savings from its employees or higher fares for its low-income customers.

Eric Mann, head of the Bus Riders Union, charged that the MTA board showed "complete contempt" for its ridership during the strike. "We just can't get this agency to acknowledge that 400,000 bus riders are human beings," he said.

Though a summary of the full contract was not released until Tuesday night, key details emerged during the day. Riordan said: "Both sides can claim victory."

The MTA achieved its objective of expanding the use of lower-paid, part-time drivers. The agreement calls for the number of part-timers to grow from 650 to 980. That total is significantly less, however, than what was proposed in the MTA's "last, best and final offer," which was placed on the table last week.

The transit agency also agreed to limit the number of its lowest-paid, entry-level drivers to no more than 150 positions, only slightly more than existed before the strike.

"This union has preserved middle-class jobs," said union chief Williams, to the delight of his membership.

The three-year contract calls for a wage increase that amounts to about 8.3% over three years when quarterly adjustments and a cost-of-living increase are included. The top pay for MTA's most experienced bus drivers will rise from $20.72 an hour to a maximum of $22.50 an hour at the end of the contract. Starting salaries for part-time drivers will be about half the top wage scale.

The package includes a reduction in overtime worked by the most senior drivers, another MTA goal. It reduces or eliminates certain work rules that the MTA complained were union featherbedding, including a provision that automatically paid drivers for the two minutes it used to take them to turn in the change they carried in the long-ago days when exact change was not required of riders.

Like Riordan, the other MTA board members said they saw the contract as a victory for both sides.

"This is a very solid deal for the MTA," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. "We're better positioned today than we were 33 days ago."

The strike actually made the MTA money--it saved an estimated $10 million to $15 million in labor costs during the month that buses and trains were idled--but it cost the agency severely in political capital.

Labor leaders were infuriated that their usual allies--Democratic county Supervisors Yaroslavsky, Burke and Gloria Molina--were among the MTA board members holding the hardest line during the strike.

The unions persuaded Gov. Gray Davis to sign a bill that robs board members of one of their prized goals--the creation of lower-cost suburban "transit zones" that would not have to take into account the unions now representing MTA workers. Transit zones can still be created, but MTA contracts will follow workers transferred to them. The unions marshaled representatives of one-sixth of the state Legislature at a private meeting in the governor's office in Los Angeles last week to underscore their concern about the strike.

And labor's allies in the state Capitol have pledged to audit the MTA's books and to explore restructuring the MTA board to dilute the power of both the mayor of the city of Los Angeles and county supervisors. One proposal would create six elective seats on the board.

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Mahony Calls for Retiring Debt Burden

Perhaps most significant, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony Tuesday called for the MTA to invest more in bus routes used by the working poor and to work with federal and state lawmakers to retire the transit agency's crushing debt burden, which has restricted its service to the public.

The cardinal, an ally of unions whose intervention gave labor leaders cover to end last week's brief county service workers' strike, invited the MTA and unions to meet under his auspices to address those issues, which board members have long placed behind their desire to expand rail service.

Riordan, a longtime friend of Mahony's, said Tuesday afternoon that the cardinal's suggestion was a good idea.

MTA board members--who were unusually unified during the contentious negotiations--say the political heat was worth it because in the new contract they managed to halt what they characterized as the agency's long tradition of fiscal waste.

"It was just as important to us to send a message that the MTA had the capacity to turn the corner on fiscal recklessness as it was to achieve the savings," Yaroslavsky said.

Molina said the MTA board has more work ahead, calling for savings to be found in administrative ranks as well. "If we're going to even have any expansion of services, we're going to have to achieve more efficiencies," she said.

At the Chatsworth bus yard, strikers finally were able to relax, using their signs as shields from the sun and looking forward to returning to work.

"I don't know how powerful we are, because this took a month to resolve," said driver Jack Dedrick, 37, secretary of United Transportation Union Local 1608. "But I think it showed them that we wouldn't back down. I think they were surprised that we lasted a month."

Part-time driver Adalberto Lara, 31, was scheduled for a 5 a.m. shift today. He said he was ready to drive, but he and others said they were worried about reprisals from angry riders. "They're going to say it took too long," he said. "After a month, there were people who lost their jobs."

Lara paused, adding: "We'll be lucky we don't get beat up on the first day."

Mireya Gomez is one of those for whom it took too long.

She lost her minimum-wage job two weeks ago at a Los Angeles sewing factory because she was unable to make the commute from her Maywood home.

Sitting inside a Huntington Park dentist's office with her husband, Diego, and daughter Araceli, Gomez said she planned to ask to be rehired when buses resume their routes today.

"We've suffered greatly," Diego Gomez said. "But that's how life is."

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Jackson credited with keeping hope alive in negotiations

LOS ANGELES -- As elected officials, news reporters, transit agency policy wonks and others teetered on the verge of exhaustion after a marathon 24-hour negotiating session early Tuesday morning, the Rev. Jesse Jackson literally ran from room to room in the Pasadena Hilton, pulled by his faith that a settlement in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 32-day strike was within reach.

"I felt it would be irresponsible to walk out with less than victory," Jackson told the Los Angeles Times.

At 6 a.m., it looked as if he was the only one who thought that.

Talks between leaders of the MTA and the union representing 4,400 striking drivers were on the verge of collapse. The distrust and anger that had led to a bitter impasse hung in the air like a stale odor. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, frustrated, said he had a speech to give at 7 a.m., and if there was no agreement, he was leaving.

An hour later, everyone was all smiles. Riordan, Jackson and other participants were standing in front of television cameras announcing they had a deal.

Everyone gave Jackson credit for cementing it.

"He pushed everybody," Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, chairwoman of the MTA board, said. "He told us, 'You've got to get this over with.' "

The epiphany had come minutes before.

That was when James Williams, leader of the bus drivers union, walked into a negotiating room and told Riordan, "Mayor, you are a tough foe. The strike is over. It's time for the buses to roll,' " Jackson recalled.

"That was a glorious moment," Jackson said.

Interrupting a campaign swing for Vice President Al Gore to jump into the middle of the bitter transit strike, Jackson emerged Tuesday as the person who held the warring parties together long enough to forge an agreement.

For weeks, as the impasse between the MTA and UTU dragged on and deepened, one name after another was floated as a possible mediator in the dispute. Gov. Gray Davis, Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony all put up candidates.

One by one, the proposed mediators either fell by the wayside or tried and failed to forge a settlement.

Jackson himself said he had twice offered Riordan his help. Both times, the mayor declined.

"He said, 'Thanks, but no thanks," Jackson said, recounting his first conversation with the mayor several weeks ago. At the time, the mayor was optimistic that a settlement was possible. The second call, set up by county Federation of Labor leader Miguel Contreras, got another rejection, this time as Riordan told Jackson he was trying to get a federal mediator.

Although Jackson in recent years has traveled the globe, hopping from one hot spot to another in the role of peacemaker, he carried a lot of baggage into the Pasadena Hilton.

For one thing, he has none of the neutrality considered so important to mediators.

The Chicago-based minister has spent the past months campaigning so hard for Democratic candidates that he couldn't even let a post-strike radio interview go by without getting off a few shots at Republicans.

Jackson also was clearly on the side of the drivers, invited through the intervention of Contreras, Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), a candidate for mayor, and Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who has been a supporter of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition since the 1980s.

Jackson, in fact, had been touring Appalachia with Jim Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, and other labor leaders when he was contacted by Contreras, with whom he had worked on the janitors' strike. Contreras urged him to come to Los Angeles in time for a rally at City Hall last Friday morning.

There, Riordan and Jackson spoke again. This time, the mayor said Jackson was welcome at the talks. With union leaders agreeing to cover the expenses of Jackson and his staff, his intervention began in earnest.

But with negotiations already close to the breaking point, some wondered whether he was the kind of conciliator the talks needed.

By all accounts, he was.

Working around the clock, holding the parties together with his plea that "we are too close to give up," Jackson proved tireless, physically shuttling between parties too deeply at odds to occupy the same room until there was an agreement.

As it turned out, even Jackson's celebrity turned out to be a bridge-building tool.

From the beginning, he made it clear to both sides that if either went back on its word or walked out of the talks, he would use his access to the media as a bully pulpit to inform the world of their backsliding.

"The difference between me and a federal mediator, the low-profile type, is that I have a profile, a point of view, just as the contentious parties do," Jackson said in an interview Tuesday. "If one party or the other is stonewalling, I am fully capable of interpreting to the world what they are doing. No group has the right to walk away with so much public service at stake."

Jackson managed to get both Riordan and union leader Williams to accompany him to a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition fund-raiser at the Beverly Hilton on Sunday night, also a celebration of Jackson's 59th birthday.

Then, on Monday night, Jackson reminded the negotiators of his reputation as someone who can get things done by inviting three U.S. soldiers he had helped bring back from Yugoslavia last year to dinner at the Pasadena Hilton. The soldiers had been captured and held by Serbian forces for more than a month before Jackson and an interfaith delegation secured their release. At the hotel, Jackson introduced them to both union and MTA leaders.

Jackson said the bitterness and anger of the MTA strike were similar to what he encountered during a Chicago firefighters strike in 1980. At the time, he said, both sides urged him to stay out, noting that others had tried to end the strike and failed. Jackson said he told them, "Just give me a chance to fail."

After what he said was 48 hours nonstop negotiations, he helped them forge an agreement.

Jackson knew several of the participants in the MTA dispute, none better than Supervisor Burke. He and she had worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, and have stayed close since. Jackson was on the balcony with King in Memphis when the civil rights leader was assassinated during his own intervention in a labor dispute involving sanitation workers.

When Jackson became involved in the negotiations in Pasadena last Friday, the two sides were in agreement on 75% of the issues, which he equated to being 25 yards from the goal line on a 100-yard football field. He said he kept pushing for the goal line, telling the two sides they could not look back.

Finally, after Jackson had shuttled offers and counteroffers back and forth countless times, he signaled a final deal by slapping a reporter's hand in a hotel hallway, while exclaiming:

"Touchdown!"

Los Angeles Times staff writers Twila Decker, Roberto J. Manzano, Douglas P. Shuit, Richard Winton, and Antonio Olivo, and correspondent Richard Fausset contributed to these stories.

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