Talks Are Resumed in Transit Walkout : Transportation: Most Orange County bus riders appear to have shifted to driving. MTA, striking mechanics remain shaprly divided. Freeway congestion worsens.

Striking mechanics and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority resumed talks Tuesday evening as Los Angeles County commuters slowly made their way through town on the second day of a transit walkout that seemed destined to drag on for several more days.

Congestion worsened on the freeways as more commuters abandoned any hope of hailing a bus and flocked to cars. With less than 20% of MTA buses on the road, the small number of bus riders who braved the buses found tight seating, long delays--and in some cases no bus at all, due to foul-ups in scheduling.

While leaders of the mechanics union and MTA negotiators agreed to meet, officials were cautious about prospects for a quick settlement, aware of sharp differences between management and labor.

“We hope we can make some progress,” said County Supervisor Ed Edelman, MTA board chairman. “We are still far apart.”

About 1,900 mechanics walked off the job Sunday morning after they were unable to reach agreement on a new contract. About 5,000 bus and train drivers and clerks, whose unions had reached last-minute tentative agreements Sunday, walked out in support, crippling a system that serves more than 500,000 riders a day.

On Day 2 of Los Angeles’ first bus strike in 12 years:

* Traffic on surface streets remained at its usual levels, but congestion increased on Los Angeles area freeways. The average commute was increased by about 15 minutes and rush hour lasted about 30 minutes longer than usual, Caltrans spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli said. Metrolink commuter trains carried an estimated 20% more passengers, but ridership on the Blue Line trolley and the Red Line subway decreased.

* In Orange County, riders appeared to have shifted to cars after buses on five MTA lines into the area were halted by the strike. The Orange County Transportation Authority reported that it received a surge of telephone calls seeking information, but their two bus lines to downtown Los Angeles carried only average passenger loads. Metro Link, which passes through Orange County, also experienced no change in ridership patterns, according to transportation officials.

* Only 318 buses out of the normal 1,900 were in service. The MTA said it was providing service on its 30 busiest routes, but failed to tell riders that in many cases the buses were serving only portions of the line, leaving some would-be passengers stranded. The busiest lines were the No. 21, which runs along Wilshire Boulevard, and the No. 30/31 on Pico Boulevard, MTA spokeswoman Andrea Greene said. The agency has no plans to reshape its deployment of buses during the strike this week.

* MTA officials planned to launch a new commuter phone service because a transit hot line was unable to handle the flood of calls. Of an estimated 15,000 calls received Monday by (800) COMMUTE, only 6,000 were answered, Greene said. The rest of the callers hung up after being put on hold for extended periods of time, and the hot line went out of service for 45 minutes Monday. The new phone service, scheduled to begin later this week, will provide recorded information.

* MTA supervisors drove 130 of the 318 buses on the road Tuesday. They had taken a refresher course in the weeks before the strike. The rest of the fleet was composed of private school buses, contracted by the MTA. Negotiations are under way with private companies to expand bus service should the strike extend beyond this week. The agency has received more than 1,700 applications in response to advertisements placed three weeks ago for temporary strike-related jobs. In two weeks, the agency expects to put 50 more drivers on the street if the strike persists.

* Transit officials tripled security patrols of the buses and bus stops after an attempted hijacking of a bus by three irate strikers was thwarted on Monday. In the only reported act of vandalism, a non-striking driver suffered a minor injury when a rock shattered his windshield.

* In the public relations war, the MTA resumed newspaper and radio ads accusing the mechanics of holding the city hostage, but said it would suspend the ads once negotiations began. The ad campaign so far has cost taxpayers $198,632.

Tuesday night’s negotiating session--the first since talks broke down Sunday--was set up by a phone call from Jim Wood, secretary-treasurer of the County Federation of Labor, to Edelman, a longtime ally of labor. It was attended by a state mediator.

In the delicate negotiations between the transit agency and the unions, the path to a settlement is obstructed by layers of politics on both sides.

The key issue in the dispute--even among the MTA’s own board members--is the subcontracting of work now performed by union mechanics to non-union private companies that pay lower wages.

Union leaders see contracting as a threat to their survival; they contend that it lowers the number of higher-paying union jobs, threatens their members’ job security and depresses wages for all workers. In the auto industry, for example, a key contract stumbling block in recent years has been demands by the nation’s major auto makers to buy many car parts from cheaper, non-union suppliers.

Contracting has been a hot political issue in transportation in Los Angeles since 1988, when the now-defunct Los Angeles County Transportation Commission turned over bus lines previously operated by the old Southern California Rapid Transit District to Foothill Transit. Foothill, which pays far lower wages to its drivers, has asked the MTA to let it take over another 12 lines now operated by MTA, promising $10 million in savings.

The push for contracting gained momentum with the election of Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican who has championed privatization, to replace Tom Bradley, a pro-union Democrat. Riordan is a member of the MTA board and appoints three other members.

Even Edelman and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, both Democrats, said that contracting must be considered in the current economic climate.

“If we can provide better quality service and less costly service, and not jeopardize any jobs and it’s served the public’s interest, why should we be precluded from considering (contracting)?” Yaroslavsky said.

Wood of the County Federation of Labor called efforts by MTA board members to contract out work “an excuse to attempt to move work out of the public sector and move it to their friends in the private sector.”

So entrenched is the dispute that both sides have argued their point with a common symbol: the dustpan.

In citing the cost savings of contracting, transit officials have repeatedly said it only costs $9 at a neighborhood store to buy a dustpan that costs the union mechanics $25 to build.

Wood answers: “We can show you dustpans we made 30 years ago that are still in service. This is the kind of disinformation that management puts out to try to belittle what we do.”

Mike Bujosa, president of the local chapter of the Amalgamated Transit Union, representing 1,900 mechanics whose top hourly wage is $20.83, called subcontracting the major issue separating the union and the transit agency.

However, there are several other issues that may be hardening Bujosa’s position, insiders say.

One occurred July 16 when, with negotiations under way, the MTA laid off 83 mechanics--a fact that has caused union members to question the MTA’s pledge that no mechanics will lose jobs because of subcontracting.

MTA officials justified the timing of the layoffs by saying they are under fire and face a $300-million shortfall as a result of a recession-triggered decline in sales tax revenue. The layoffs of union and non-union employees had “nothing to do with labor negotiations; it had to do with cost reduction,” MTA spokeswoman Greene said.