Airport Bus Drivers, Clerks Strike : Management’s Proposed Wage and Benefit Cuts Rejected

Drivers and ticket clerks at an Anaheim airport bus company have walked off their jobs, rejecting management’s proposals for wage and benefit cutbacks.

According to Don Boyles, president of Airport Services Co., all 137 drivers and clerks struck the firm after negotiations reached an impasse.

Boyles said that the company, while profitable, is asking an 11.5% reduction in wages and benefits because it “is not making an adequate return to satisfy the owners at the present rate of operating cost.”

Cal Hetrick, a spokesman for Teamsters Local 952, which represents the striking workers, said that in the past, Airport Services has “been a comparatively decent company to deal with.” But “this time they took a position and they wouldn’t budge, and their position was rollback,” he said.

The Anaheim firm provides bus transportation to John Wayne, Long Beach and Los Angeles International airports, as well as to Disneyland and various hotels as far away as Pasadena. Boyles said that on Friday about 20% of the company’s schedule was operating to LAX and John Wayne, but none to Long Beach Airport, with supervisory personnel filling in. Sheriff’s deputies at John Wayne Airport said no pickets had appeared and operations were normal. Pickets were at LAX, according to the union.

Striking employees were being notified that they would be replaced, Boyles said. No new drivers had been hired, he said, and strikers who returned to work would be rehired at a new, lower wage, which he declined to give. The current top wages at the company are $10.95 per hour for drivers and $10.10 hourly for clerks.

The company’s position, Boyles said, “was dictated by changes in the marketplace” and represents the first contract negotiation in which the company has asked for a reduction in wages and benefits. The last strike, lasting three weeks, took place in 1976.

Hetrick, whose union has agreements with more than 500 companies in Orange County and adjacent areas, said that attempts to roll back wages and benefits are “very common today. All the employers make an attempt at it.” The practice has become more frequent in the past few years, he said, primarily because of the Reagan Administration, “with the way they view labor and working people,” and anti-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. This hostile atmosphere, he said, has provoked an increased feeling of solidarity on the part of labor union members.

“When things are going well and things are rosy,” he said, “the members have a tendency to let the other guy do it. When things tighten up, people stand up to be counted. It really brings them back to that basic principle.”