Bumpy Road Fails to Shake Union Chief

Every mechanic knows that a rough idle means trouble.

So union President Neil H. Silver knew what to do last week when his get-back-to-work request backfired--leaving some of his 1,860 mechanics, who had been idled by the Los Angeles bus drivers’ strike, agitated and fuming.

All but a handful of those belonging to Silver’s Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1277, refused to follow their leader’s request to cross striking Metropolitan Transportation Authority drivers’ picket lines.

There were rumblings that the rank and file were angry enough to vote Silver out of office Nov. 7 when Local 1277 holds its first election in three years.

So, like a good mechanic, Silver pulled out his tools and started the repair work.

First was the letter to members explaining why he took the unprecedented step of asking them to go back to work while their compatriots in the drivers union were still striking.

Then came the first strike-benefit checks--modest $100 payments welcomed nonetheless by mechanics who have not been paid since they walked off the job three weeks ago.

And finally there was the hand-shaking, back-patting and baby-kissing that took place when Silver personally handed out some of the checks to union members gathered Thursday in Burbank.

A jovial character known for his jokes and his plaid sport coats, the portly, Bronx-born labor leader knows when to rev the engine.

“There are a lot of Neils,” he said of the disarmingly laid-back, self-deprecating and friendly persona that has kept people laughing outside the Pasadena hotel rooms where contract talks are being held.

“But there’s a Neil that is a raging maniac,” he said. “That Neil has no sense of humor at all.”

Silver, who lives in Granada Hills with his wife of 25 years, has been a union man since 18. That’s when he signed on with the Merchant Marine and joined the Seaman’s Union.

“I was a kid, and the union gave me a work ethic. It taught me to be responsible,” he said. The union also put some money in his pocket.

“My father was working in a slaughterhouse during the day and in a band at night,” he said. “There I was, 18 and making three times what he was making, because of the union.”

Those around him break out in guffaws when Silver jokes about a stint in the Navy during the 1965 Vietnam buildup.

“I was aboard a destroyer called the Brinkley Bass, and somehow we cut the guided missile destroyer USS Waddell in half,” he said. “The bad part of it was the Waddell was the flag ship of the 7th Fleet. And that was just one of the crashes. We limped back to Long Beach and got a new bow on the Brinkley Bass. Then we ran the new bow into Pier 15 and cut it in half.”

Silver ended a second stint with the Merchant Marine in 1974 by joining his uncle--who was a bus driver with the old Southern California Rapid Transit District--on the picket line for a 10-week strike. A short time later, Silver landed an RTD job himself as a bus cleaner.

On his first day on the payroll, he made waves by complaining about an RTD security guard who roughly shoved him away when he got too close to a pile of fare boxes. Within days, co-workers had appointed Silver to be a union steward.

“I was three weeks into the job. I was the only steward in the union who was a new hire still on probation,” he said.

Silver slowly worked his way up the union ladder, becoming a vice president in 1980 and president in 1987. He was defeated for a new three-year term by 57 votes in 1991. “It was an involuntary sabbatical,” he said with a laugh.

Losing and going back to work as a $19-an-hour bus cleaner was a humbling experience, Silver said. “I took the job because I wasn’t about to give away the MTA pension I’d negotiated,” he said.

He was reelected president in 1994 and 1997. These days he earns $65,000 a year as Local 1277 president--21% more than what the highest-paid member earns from the MTA. Along with the MTA mechanics, the union represents several hundred other bus mechanics in Palm Springs and Riverside.

Those who have faced Silver at the bargaining table say they have respect for him.

“Neil is probably a complicated individual. He has a great sense of humor, but he fights for his members,” Tom Webb, the MTA’s chief labor negotiator, said Friday. “He’s an honest guy. He’s willing to be creative to try and solve problems.”

Such creativity may have led to Monday’s return-to-work request.

Silver said making the recommendation was the hardest thing he has ever done. He did it, he said, to keep a pledge that both his union and the bus drivers’ union made to Gov. Gray Davis.

On Sept. 30, the governor had signed pro-union legislation, SB 1101. That measure requires that the MTA abide by all existing labor contracts if the huge agency is broken up to create smaller transit zones, as suburban leaders in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere have proposed.

Silver said he assured the governor’s representative, Stephen Smith, director of the state Department of Industrial Relations, that mechanics would return to work for a seven-day “cooling-off period” as a gesture of good faith if the bill was signed.

“I feel ashamed I had to do it,” Silver said of his call to resume work. “But I don’t regret it. I’d do it again.”

Later, a letter to the drivers’ United Transportation Union members over the signature of its president, James A. Williams, denounced Silver’s action as “shocking, disgusting and dishonorable.”

Mechanics walking picket lines with drivers said they took heat from them after Silver’s get-back-to-work request. But they say they continue to stand behind their man.

“He did the right thing. He definitely didn’t sell the membership out,” said David Chamness, a Red Line subway mechanic who has worked for the MTA for 30 years. “You couldn’t ask for a better president. I don’t see anybody challenging him in next month’s election. I see Neil being reelected.”

Jesse Gonzales, a bus mechanic, said Silver’s letter “told the whole story” and won over any doubting Local 1277 members. “The governor did us a favor; he did the governor a favor. Nobody blames Neil.”

Back at the Pasadena hotel, Silver seemed to sense that. When a TV news cameraman interviewing him Friday said he needed to get a wide shot, the 5-foot-6, 220-pounder pulled open his sport jacket and, with a big grin, displayed his paunch.

The master mechanic was back in gear.