Strike by Bus Drivers Is Second in the 16-Year History of OCTD

The only other strike by Orange County Transit District workers took place in February, 1981, and, unlike this week’s walkout, was preceded by many early warnings.

Major businesses and schools experienced only normal absenteeism during the 1981 strike. Police reported little extra traffic on freeways and surface streets. Shopping centers enjoyed their normal flow of customers.

The strike, the first since the OCTD began service in 1972, idled all of the district’s buses for 22 days.

For nearly a week before the strike began, news reports indicated that the OCTD and the United Transportation Union had apparently reached an impasse. By the time that 957 employees--mechanics and maintenance workers as well as bus drivers--walked off the job on Feb. 5, 1981, area colleges and businesses already had begun organizing or expanding their car- and van-pooling programs.

The evening before the strike, riders on some of the Transit District’s 53 local and 16 express lines spent the homeward commute organizing car pools of their own.

The job action was felt most harshly by OCTD employees, who had to live on $25 a week in strike pay from their union. Some sought part-time jobs to keep ahead of their bills and house payments.

A state mediator had tried to keep the two sides at the bargaining table, but union officials broke off talks on Feb. 4, after the OCTD revised its offer to mechanics and maintenance workers.

The district’s offer would have increased payroll and benefit costs by more than $12 million over the life of the three-year contract, transit officials said.

But the transit workers were seeking salaries equal to those received by their counterparts in the Southern California Rapid Transit District, union officials said. That would have raised OCTD costs by $17 million.

For eight days, negotiators from the union and the Transit District refused to talk, each side insisting that the other would have to make the first move toward a settlement.

Their first bargaining session after the strike began lasted only 90 minutes. Talks resumed a week later, and a compromise was reached on Feb. 20.

The two sides compromised on wage hikes in the three-year contract, but the union won a 5% “adjustment” in mechanics’ pay the second year, to bring their salaries in line with other diesel mechanics in the region.

Management’s main victory came as a 7% annual ceiling on cost-of-living adjustments granted to all employees. The union had wanted no limit.

The final agreement set raises of 6% the first year and 4% in each of the next two years for drivers. Mechanics received 9% raises the first year, 6% the second (plus the 5% “adjustment”) and another 5% the third year.

Five days after negotiators reached their compromise, union members and the OCTD directors ratified the settlement. Most bus service resumed the next day.