MTA Reduced Its Pay Offer, Union Claims

As the strike against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority reached its 24th day Monday, leaders of the bus drivers union alleged that management is trying to prolong the walkout by reducing the proposed pay hike in its latest offer.

With the parties at a stalemate, the drivers’ United Transportation Union said the latest proposal from the MTA seems to show a hardening of the agency’s position.

“They are now offering us 25% less than a week ago,” said Goldy Norton, spokesman for the union.

The MTA had offered drivers 2.7% in each of the next three years, but Norton said the MTA in its latest proposal is offering a 2% pay raise annually. Norton said the new proposal did offer a different approach to pensions, but the union believes that proposal would leave its members worse off.

MTA spokesman Ed Scannell said the latest proposal given to the union Friday was “a better overall package than any prior proposal.”

Some union officials, however, privately groused Monday that the move was yet another sign that the agency had a larger agenda that includes forcing the union to accept the dissolution of the existing MTA into small transit zones.

The drivers union wants to maintain existing protections against further privatization of suburban bus service, believing that legislation recently signed by Gov. Gray Davis will not give it the safety net of its current contract.

The MTA’s management wants to keep open the option of creating a transit zone in the San Fernando Valley, or expanding or creating one in the San Gabriel Valley.

Talks have sputtered along at such a slow pace that both sides privately are considering the option of a federal mediator. Face-to-face talks in the last few days have barely lasted an hour a day.

The union offered another formal proposal Monday, countering the MTA offer made Friday.

Meanwhile, the mechanics union, the Amalgamated Transit Union, did not hold talks with the MTA on Monday because of the Yom Kippur holiday. Mechanics union chief Neil Silver has set a deadline of midnight tonight for resolving the contract deadlock.

Silver asked his members last Tuesday to go back to work for seven days while he continued to try to get a contract. But, he said, if the strike is not resolved, he will ask the 1,860 mechanics to walk.

“This will be the strike to beat all strikes if that happens,” he said.