Christmas Drove Bus Drivers Back to Work, Union Says

Timing was key to the failure of the two-week strike by Orange County bus drivers, because the threat of firings three days before Christmas could end any walkout, union officials said Sunday.

Juliene K. Smith, general chairwoman of United Transportation Union Local 19, said she recommended Saturday that the 700 strikers return to work today in an effort to avoid dissention within the union. If the union had recommended that the strike continue, she said, some drivers would have crossed picket lines to avoid joblessness on Dec. 25.

“I was not willing to split the membership, have some go back and some stay out. So rather than create a schism within the union, our committee decision was to advise all the drivers to return,” Smith said.

The Orange County Transit District announced last Monday that any drivers not at their jobs this morning would lose them. “Obviously,” Smith said, “I question their motives.”

The strike, which began Dec. 8, ended Saturday when hundreds of bus drivers caravaned from their union meeting to district offices and signed up to return to their jobs.

‘Calculated Decision’

Other labor officials and independent arbitrators agreed with Smith that the threat of Christmastime in the unemployment line was too much.

Mary Yunt, secretary-treasurer of the Orange County Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO, said she also would have recommended that the drivers return to work. “You’re dealing with people here,” she said. “I believe I would have found it very hard to say, ‘Go ahead and let them fire you’ right before Christmas.

“It was a very calculated decision on (the district’s) part. They could have waited another week, but they knew very well that it was appropriate timing. And it worked.”

On Friday, declaring that negotiations were at an impasse, the OCTD announced that it had implemented some sections of a new labor contract without even the 7.5% pay raise over three years that the district previously had offered. The union originally had sought a 13% hike over that period. The new contract also allows the district to increase drug testing and tighten discipline for unexcused absences. In addition, it allows increased use of part-time drivers, and the contracting out of routes and services to private firms. The union had objected to all those provisions.

United Transportation Union attorney James L. Evans said he will go to court, probably this week, to challenge the district’s assertion that negotiations had reached an impasse. Evans said the union has been willing to negotiate and, therefore, no impasse can be called. If a judge rules in the UTU’s favor, he said, the district would be prevented from imposing that contract.

Threats to fire and replace employees are a common factor in today’s labor relations atmosphere, said John C. Sperry, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 324. He noted that striking Disneyland workers ignored the park’s threats to replace them two years ago and eventually won an improved contract.

Sperry said such action can hurt an employer if workers remain on strike and eventually win a new contract, because the employer then has an overloaded payroll with both returning employees and new hires. “If the employer were to lose the strike, they may wind up in a financial disaster themselves,” he said.

Both Sperry and Yunt said the pattern of tough management stances will not affect union membership. As employers take hard lines, more employees will look to unions for protection, they said.

But one arbitrator (an impartial labor relations specialist hired by both sides to settle contract disputes) said she believes recent setbacks have shown that unions must change their techniques. “The unions are going through a tough time right now. I think the labor movement is realizing that the rules of the game are changing,” said Mei Bickner, who also teaches classes in labor relations at Cal State Fullerton.

Bickner, who stressed that she was speaking of labor relations in general, said times have changed drastically since the labor movement’s successes of the 1960s. Management then was able to pass on the costs of improved contracts to consumers. But with increased competition, companies are finding it easier to cut the labor force than to become more efficient, she said.

A tightened economy also makes it easier for the employer to threaten to fire strikers, Bickner said. “What employers have learned over the last three, four or five years is that if you have a strike called against you, . . . giving a deadline to the striking members of the union or otherwise permanently replacing them can be very effective,” she said said. “There are lots of people who are willing to step into their shoes.”

OCTD spokeswoman Joanne Curran said the district probably would have been able to achieve a fairly good service level within two to three weeks by using applications on file. She said there is an ample labor pool from which to draw, including out-of-state inquiries.

“The average driver makes $27,000, and the environment in which they drive, compared to other transit districts across the country, Orange County is superior,” Curran said.

The consequence of threats to fire strikers, Bickner said, often is lowered morale. “I have the feeling that (the district) will experience short-term gains at the bargaining table but will have a long-term cost. They’ll have workers who will be very, very unhappy,” Bickner said.

Unions also must work on their public perception, the arbitrator stressed. Although many walkouts are called over benefit disputes, most people believe that strikers merely want more cash, she said.

Bickner once quizzed a Cal State Fullerton class about a supermarket strike in which wages were not an issue. The students almost all said that money was the central issue, she said.