MTA, Drivers Reach Accord on New Pact

Everyone appears to have gained something from the new transit pact hammered out between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its drivers union shortly before dawn Tuesday:

The MTA and its new chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, get the labor peace they dearly need. The drivers have maintained jobs, wages and benefits while creating an opportunity to build their union’s membership base. And, for riders, the agreement offers the potential of more money for bus improvements.

The 4,200-member United Transportation Union’s rank and file still must ratify the agreement. The proposed contract also must be approved by the MTA board.

Both sides declined to discuss precise details of the agreement, reached shortly after 4 a.m., though its major points could be gleaned from interviews with participants and knowledgeable officials.

Riordan said Tuesday that the tentative agreement allows the union to meet its goals of protecting the jobs, wages and benefits of existing drivers and prevent any reduction in union members. “But they also recognized that we needed to have efficiencies if we’re going to be able to add bus service,” he said.

Acting MTA chief Linda Bohlinger said the proposed contract offers an “employee-friendly way” for the MTA to provide more economical bus service.

The agreement reportedly allows the MTA to seek to reduce the cost of operating certain lines by using newly hired union drivers paid $10 an hour instead of the $19 an hour received by veteran drivers.

The drivers union will have the right of first refusal to take over the lines where costs are high and ridership is low. If the union declines to bid on the work, the MTA can seek contracts with private bus companies, said a source close to the negotiations.

The tentative agreement would save the agency at least $20 million over the next three years, according to officials.

A Riordan aide said the agreement provides a way to put more buses on the street for less money.

MTA officials say they believed the union saw the concept of lower-salaried drivers as preferable to the MTA seeking to turn over bus lines to private contractors or simply eliminating the lines.

County supervisor and MTA board member Mike Antonovich had been a critic of the MTA’s overall transportation agenda, saying it gave short shrift to many bus riders, especially those in “periphery” areas, such as his northern county constituents. But the tentative agreement, Antonovich said, will “save money, provide additional [bus] services to the underserved areas and to provide a stable work environment.”

County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, acting MTA chairwoman in the absence of the vacationing Riordan, said the tentative accord is a good one for all involved and that she expects it to be ratified.

Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, an umbrella labor organization, said he too was glad a strike had been averted and that the terms seemed mostly acceptable.

“We were prepared to go on strike. . . . We had the whole strike alliance ready to go,” Contreras said. “We’re just glad it was averted, and that we hopefully have a contract everyone can live with. No one, especially the workers, wanted to disrupt the bus service.”

But Contreras said he was concerned that some new bus drivers might be stuck in some kind of “second-tier” system without the same pay, benefits and opportunities for promotion. “It is something we will have to watch,” Contreras said. “We are very concerned about it, and that it is not being abused.”

But an MTA official said, “Yes, it will create a lower tier of employees, but at least they will be union members.”

Transit officials say the agreement is good for union drivers because it guarantees no layoffs, no cuts in wages or benefits, and provides a 9% to 10% pay raise over the next three years.

Transit officials said the agency already has different wage rates for drivers depending on when they were hired--implemented through previous negotiations to bring down labor costs. Newly hired employees are paid less than senior drivers.

The proposed accord settles some of the concerns of some MTA board members, who say the agency is spending too much money.

“If it was not within the parameters we set, we would have had to be called in for a special meeting” before the two sides agreed to the proposal, said one MTA board member, County Supervisor Don Knabe.

“And it’s a good thing. A strike would have been horrendous for everyone,” he said.

Negotiations continue with the mechanics’ Amalgamated Transit Union and the clerks’ Transportation Communications Union.