UTU members strike MTA
LOS ANGELES -- At 12:01 a.m., September 16, thousands of UTU-represented bus and rail operators hit the picket lines, plunging the nation's second-largest city into a strike.

As this issue of the UTU News was going to press, more than 4,300 UTU members were still on the picket lines and the MTA's 450,000 daily riders had no public transportation. Negotiations had resumed.

The walkout came after months of bargaining between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the UTU failed to reach an acceptable agreement. The final breakdown in the talks came after a 60-day cooling-off period and two extensions of the strike deadline.

The drivers set up picket lines almost immediately. They have been honored by MTA unions representing mechanics and clerks, and dozens of other unions.

In regard to the conditions that led to the impasse with the MTA, International President Charles L. Little said, "The UTU stands behind our brave brothers and sisters who work on the MTA as they do what they must to get a fair and just contract. Our prayers and thoughts are with all of them during this difficult time."

UTU General Chairperson James Williams, along with L.A. County Federation of Labor chief Miguel Contreras, angrily announced their members' intention to walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. September 16 at a news conference.

"I have gone the last mile. I cannot go any further," said Williams, his voice heavy with anger and frustration.

"This union," Contreras said of the drivers, "feels it is being forced out on strike" because of management's failure to bargain seriously. "There is no way we can reach an agreement tonight," he said.

The dramatic walkout came after negotiators for the UTU and MTA failed to find common ground on overtime pay, work rules and other issues. Confronting huge operating deficits in coming years, the MTA has been demanding a 15% reduction in overtime pay for drivers and wants extensive changes in work rules that are favorable to unions.

Faced with demands by MTA negotiators that unions for the drivers, mechanics and clerks make significant economic concessions, Contreras said unions would work with the MTA "but not at the expense of destroying middle-class jobs we helped create in Los Angeles."

Transit agency officials said concessions, sometimes referred to as "givebacks," were essential for the MTA's financial well-being.

Another MTA proposal would put about 400 operators on a four-day workweek requiring them to be on duty for 13 hours but paid for only 10, with no overtime. The three hours of unpaid time would be spent killing time in MTA recreation rooms or preparing for runs. Overtime is a significant part of the average bus driver's income, and the UTU estimates that the four-day week outlined by the MTA would reduce an average operator's earnings by 15%.

Bus drivers earn $8 an hour at the entry level; the most experienced make $20.72 an hour.

A sore point among drivers is that the MTA likes to say drivers and mechanics make an average of $50,000 a year. But drivers say that consists of base pay of just under $43,000 and $7,000 in overtime, which means working a lot of weekends and holidays.

"There is hardly anyone here who can make it without overtime," said Lawrence Tubbs, an MTA driver and member of Local 1563 in El Monte, Cal. Tubbs said his income hovers between $48,000 and $52,000, but only because he is willing to work weekends and holidays. He is so close to the edge financially, he said, that losing overtime would jeopardize his ability to make car or house payments.

The MTA wants to reduce the demand for overtime by hiring significantly more part-time drivers, who gradually would replace full-time drivers through attrition.

Creating a new workweek is just part of a much bigger package of cuts the MTA is reportedly seeking from drivers. Lawrence Drasin, a UTU attorney, said the MTA is seeking $23 million in savings over three years.

The MTA is also in the process of trying to draft new contracts with the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), which represents 1,861 mechanics, and the 650-member Transportation Communications International Union (TCU), which represents clerks.

And the strike may actually be the path of least resistance for the members of the MTA board. Unless it wrings concessions from its workers, it may have to scale back politically appealing transit construction programs that are strongly supported by the state legislators and congressional representatives upon whom the county depends for its own operating funds.

On the side of new transit projects are politically connected contractors and middle-class voters who are potential riders. Most important are lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington, who want more transit projects for which they can claim credit.

The majority of the 13-member MTA board is composed of elected officials who are as immune to a strike's political pressure as politicians can be: Mayor Richard Riordan, a lame-duck moderate Republican nearing the end of his term, controls four votes. Five other votes belong to county supervisors, who represent districts so massive that they are virtually invulnerable to a challenge at the polls.

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