Bargaining Stances Harden in MTA Strike

Both sides in the 4-week-old Metropolitan Transportation Authority strike have fired warning shots at each other over the last 24 hours, promising an escalation in a bitter conflict that is already setting new standards in the stormy history of Los Angeles transit walkouts.

First came the announcement Tuesday night by the MTA’s chief executive officer, Julian Burke, that he had given the striking United Transportation Union, which represents 4,400 bus drivers and rail operators, his “last, best and final offer.”

Then, on Wednesday, the strike’s 26th day, Neil Silver, president of the mechanics’ Amalgamated Transit Union, rescinded last week’s directive asking members to cross picket lines and return to work.

“I’m asking all my members to honor the UTU’s picket lines,” Silver said after a big rally at Burbank’s Pickwick Center.

The announcement carried none of the punch of last week’s directive, since few of the mechanics he represents crossed the picket lines anyway.

But for Silver, the decision to ask his members to honor the picket lines was nonetheless an important step. He said he will meet with MTA negotiators today but he indicated clearly that he is growing impatient with the talks’ stalemate. Making a point with a bit of humor, he said:

“I am going to give the MTA my last, best, final offer and if they don’t accept it, I’m going to mail that offer to the [transit agency’s] board of directors, and if they don’t accept that, I’m mailing it to their parents.”

In addition to receiving what Burke described as a final offer Tuesday, United Transportation Union President James Williams got a letter from the MTA, saying the stalemated talks were at an impasse.

Burke said he would give Williams until 9 a.m. today to respond to the latest contract offer. A spokesman said Wednesday that the union chief and his staff were studying the proposal and would not comment on it.

The words “impasse” and “last, best and final offer” are legally loaded terms in labor negotiations, and raised questions about how far the MTA is willing to go to get its buses back on the road.

The characterizations could open the door--if the drivers continue their walkout without accepting the contract being offered to them--to the hiring of replacement drivers, according to most common interpretations.

At the very least, Burke said that if Williams rejects the offer, he will take the proposed contract directly to the 4,400 members of the drivers union. Already plans are underway to use MTA management, phone banks and the Internet to get the proposed contract out.

Another option would be for the MTA to try to bring in a third party, such as a federal mediator. Previous proposals by MTA officials to use a federal mediator have been rebuffed by Williams. A state mediator already has intervened unsuccessfully in the talks.

Making a last and final offer, said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, “is an escalation. It puts you in a box and ends talks with the other side, because you’re saying there is no point to further negotiations.”

Replacing Workers Would Be Complicated

In the private sector, labor experts say, a last, best and final offer, if there has been good-faith bargaining, can mean the employer can impose a contract unilaterally and require employees to accept it or lose their jobs.

Replacement workers willing to work under the terms of unilaterally imposed contracts are common in the private sector, but experts say the fact that the MTA strike involves public employees complicates things tremendously.

For one thing, according to Ray Huffer of the Transportation Communications Union, which represents dispatchers and clerical workers, much of the MTA’s funding comes from federal and state governments, and conditions attached to the money could prevent something like the hiring of replacement workers during a strike.

“They must continue to negotiate,” Huffer said.

That brings up another possibility: The drivers union could decide that the MTA isn’t willing to play hardball, assume Burke is bluffing and call him on it.

That was a position being put forward by mechanics who attended a big rally in Burbank.

One mechanics union official said, “Jim Williams was given a deadline. Yeah? So what? They are firing blanks right now.”

At this point, the MTA is unwilling to concede that developments will ever reach a point at which they would hire replacement drivers.

At no time in the history of the MTA, or its predecessor agency, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, has the agency hired strike breakers, according to MTA historians.

But the agency has never before declared an impasse either.

For that matter, it has been 26 years since the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents nearly 2,000 mechanics who are supporting the drivers’ walkout, had to hand out strike benefits to mechanics.

Officials from Amalgamated’s international union flew in from Washington, D.C., to show support for Silver and the union at the rally Wednesday.

During the event, what seemed like nearly the union’s entire membership showed up, in part to receive $100 weekly benefit checks. Officials said the last time members received strike benefits was in 1974.

About 700 bags of groceries were also distributed to union members.

Meanwhile, the MTA said buses were running on two “lifeline” routes, Nos. 30 and 214, along Central Los Angeles corridors without incident Wednesday. This week, the rear window of one bus was broken, nails were thrown in the path of another and another bus was chased by what MTA spokesmen said were 25 to 30 picketers.