Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COUNTY : OCTD Drivers Vote to Remain in Same Union

Hundreds of bus drivers for the Orange County Transit District, who were involved in an ill-fated strike in December, have voted to remain in the United Transportation Union, rejecting a takeover bid by the Teamsters.

After daylong balloting on Friday by 685 of the transit agency’s 730 drivers, state mediation service officials who counted the ballots at OCTD headquarters in Garden Grove declared that Tustin-based UTU Local 19 had defeated the Teamsters Local 911 of Long Beach by a vote of 412 to 273.

The vote capped two months of unrest after December’s two-week strike by drivers against OCTD over wages and policies affecting absenteeism, job security and employee drug testing.

There were tears and hugs among many of the 75 activists from both unions who gathered at the OCTD administration building to watch the vote tallying, according to transit district spokeswoman Joanne Curran.

UTU Chairwoman Juliene Smith, who had predicted the victory, said that had the Teamsters won the election, it would have meant the end of Local 19. It was the Teamsters’ second defeat in three years in attempts to unseat the UTU.

Earlier Friday, before the election results were announced, Smith had confidently predicted victory and vowed to continue battling OCTD in court.

Now that the vote is over, the UTU will turn its attention to a suit it filed against the district for failing to collect and pass on to the union dues previously subtracted from drivers’ paychecks, crippling the union financially. No court date has been set in the case.

The drivers are still working without a contract after they ended their 13-day strike in December when OCTD threatened to replace them.