Greyhound Strike Takes Its Toll on Central Valley

“We can’t count on anything, Mike,” Ray Philpot said matter-of-factly into the phone Tuesday. “There’s a 5:05 p.m., but that may not be here till 8 or 9.”

Philpot’s caller was a local beauty supply salesman looking for a Greyhound bus to take some supplies north to the home office in Fresno. Having struck out, he’d have to drive them there himself and return, wasting an hour and a half.

This was a defeat and it ate at Philpot, who owns the Greyhound depot at this Central Valley junction, where California 198 slices across State 99. Philpot, 56, is a prideful man, the kind of person who quit umpiring high school games after 20 years because he missed one balk. He brings the same zeal for efficiency to the depot he bought 13 years ago. He loves knowing how to solve problems, how to piece together a cross-country trip, and spitting out precise schedule data from memory.

But these days, Philpot is stuck with a riddle he can’t solve: how to get people from here to there in the midst of Greyhound’s 20-day-old drivers strike. It’s tearing his orderly world to shreds, reducing him from schedule master to something more akin to a Beirut travel broker who sells every ticket with a caveat.

“Like flipping a coin,” he said.

While the Greyhound strike seems a mere blip of inconvenience in urban centers like Los Angeles, the guessing game that Philpot and his customers have to play is being echoed inside thousands of other small-town Greyhound offices throughout the nation.

Since its 9,000 drivers and office and maintenance workers went on strike over a contract dispute March 2, Greyhound has used replacement drivers to restore about a third of its departures. However, most of the service has been aimed at major stops. Places like Goshen get what’s left, and that seems to change on a daily basis.

It was about 9 in the morning. The wood-paneled depot, surrounded by a truck washing business and a mobile home sales lot, was empty. The 6:15 bus to Tulare and points south hadn’t arrived until 8:30. The next one, due at 11:25, hadn’t come on time since the strike began.

The phone rang. Philpot answered with his almost-unfailing cheer. It was a schedule query. “So you’re goin’ to Stockton, honey?” he said, and gave an exaggerated sigh of sympathy. “I could better answer your question if you call back at 10:30.” By then he’d know, after chatting with dispatchers up and down the Valley, how late the few buses that still pass through Goshen were running today.

He hung up. “That’s the way I have to do business,” he said. “I really feel so helpless and stupid because I can’t answer a person’s question.”

Before the strike, Philpot could count on 18 buses a day stopping at his depot on State 99 between Bakersfield and Fresno. These days he sees only five. Often, the buses are late. Worse than that, they usually arrive full or near-full, forcing new passengers to stand.

“Monday night the bus to Calexico pulled in and there were four seats left and 15 people here waiting to get on,” Philpot said.

Trying to limit the uncertainties, Philpot spends time on the phone begging agents up and down State 99 to remind the inexperienced drivers to stop at Goshen. When buses pull in, he asks drivers to make sure parcels for nearby destinations like Porterville and Visalia, which now receive virtually no Greyhound service, are dropped off. He has, on occasion, had to show drivers how to open the baggage bins.

“These drivers haven’t got a clue,” he said.

Many of Philpot’s customers are patient about such inconveniences. They have no alternatives.

Most are Mexican nationals, Central Valley farm workers returning to visit their families. They are drawn by low fares, such as $76.95 for the round-trip to Calexico. There is a commercial airport a few miles away in Visalia, but a ticket to Los Angeles costs $153, while Greyhound does it for $24.95. Greyhound’s refusal to compromise on its last wage offer to strikers is based on the argument that higher wages would force fare increases.

In small towns like Goshen, Greyhound is critical not only to low-income travelers but to local businesses that need to ship products quickly. Some local companies, such as the one that sends crickets to the San Diego Zoo, can tolerate the instability. Others, including the firm that prints ballot materials for state election officials, has stopped using Greyhound until the strike ends.

The last time Greyhound drivers struck, in 1983, travelers could turn to another nationwide bus company, Trailways. Now that alternative is gone. Greyhound’s owner, Fred Currey, bought Trailways in 1987 and merged the two systems.

With negotiations between the company and the Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Locals having broken down, and with the pace of hiring replacement drivers having slowed, there is little hope for significant improvement in rural outposts like Goshen.

And so life’s happy moments are redefined. Take Tuesday. The 11:25 a.m. southbound bus came in at 11:40--practically on time.

Philpot smiled. “Now this is a success story,” he said. The phone rang. It was the agent in Tulare, the bus’s next stop. “Headed your way,” Philpot reported. “Even some empty seats.”

BACKGROUND

The Greyhound bus strike remains stalemated after the company broke off talks over the weekend and said it would not return to the bargaining table unless violence against replacement drivers ended. The Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Locals, which represents the strikers, says it has not sanctioned the attacks. Deeper differences remain over wages and job-security issues. Federal mediators Tuesday were trying to arrange separate meetings with the two sides. Meanwhile, Greyhound, which has hired replacement drivers, said it would announce an expansion of service today.