Bus Riders Share a a Bond With Drivers

By ERIN TEXEIRA

Sept. 16, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its unions danced along the edge of a strike Friday, the agency’s management continued to characterize the dispute as a battle between well-paid drivers and their hardscrabble riders.

In some ways, that’s a fair comparison: The average bus driver, earning about $50,000 a year, is solidly middle class and receives adequate benefits.

In contrast, most MTA riders are working poor people who earn less than $15,000 a year.

But salary data tell just part of the story.

In many ways, the two groups are similar: Their racial and ethnic compositions are almost identical--overwhelmingly black and Latino. Both are mostly hands-on laborers who put in long, physically grueling hours to make ends meet.

Many drivers, like Evelyn Davis, are former low-income bus riders.

“We’re all just ordinary people, going back and forth to work,” said Davis, who used a government program to get off welfare 16 years ago and now drives Line 20. “They rely on us and we rely on them.”

So who are these people, riders and drivers, who share more than 7 million hours a year on city public transportation? Who seem to share remarkably similar views on a local economy that maintains stubborn divides between ethnic groups and social classes?

Men and women ride city buses in about even numbers. More than half are Latino and about one-fifth are African American.

Almost half do not have motor vehicles in their households, and most don’t have valid drivers’ licenses.

Riders overwhelmingly rely on public transportation to get around the city, many traveling to do some of the city’s toughest work.

“There are a lot of low-income workers, immigrants, security guards, waiters, janitors, garment workers, and some of them don’t even make the minimum wage,” said Martin Hernandez, an organizer for the Bus Riders Union, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“There are disabled, students that go to the community colleges by bus, high school students, vocational students, senior citizens, people who aren’t able to drive anymore,” he said.

Of the agency’s 4,400 transit operators, all but a few hundred are bus drivers, Wosk said. Their profiles often parallel those of riders.

Potential drivers don’t need high school diplomas or the equivalent to apply. They must be at least 21 years old with good driving records and experience working with the public, among other qualifications.

The average MTA driver is a full-time worker, age 42.

Nearly a third are Latino men and--aside from the 16% who are white, Native American, Asian and Latina--the rest are African American men and women.

The city ZIP Code that is home to the most MTA bus and rail operators is 90043, said Gary Wosk, an MTA spokesman. That area includes Crenshaw, Leimert Park and Baldwin Hills, which have some of the city’s most established middle-class African American neighborhoods.

No matter their backgrounds, by all accounts, bus drivers do a tough job.

“These are hard-working, working-class people who have chosen this as a career,” said Goldy Norton, a spokesman for the United Transportation Union, which represents the bus and rail operators.”

At the heart of the current labor dispute is a city proposal to reduce the overtime paid to bus and rail operators, by having them work longer shifts over a four-day workweek at regular pay.

This would also involve the drivers’ putting in split shifts, working in two blocks of time broken up by unpaid hours during off-peak ridership times.

In a press conference this week, city officials portrayed drivers and riders as being from different social classes.

Julian Burke, chief executive of the MTA, pointed out that most riders earn less than $15,000 a year, citing data gathered in the mid-1990s. “Our union employees make a very substantial amount more than that,” he said.

Mayor Richard Riordan added that “a number of [MTA] employees make over $80,000 a year. We’re standing firm as a board on behalf of the citizens of Los Angeles.”

MTA data show that about 3% of drivers earn more than $75,000 a year.

The average hourly wage for a driver is $17.12, Wosk said.

Working a 40-hour week at that rate would earn drivers $35,609.60 per year. Thus, to reach the $50,000 average, drivers must put in some overtime, working more than 56 hours a week.

Many riders witness firsthand these long hours--and feel more solidarity than resentment toward drivers.

“It is a hard job to be a bus driver,” said Lenin Barahona, a janitor at USC who boards the Line 204 bus near east Hollywood at 3 a.m. “Everyone knows they need better wages. The companies are always offering something less than what the workers really need.”

His sense of solidarity has made Barahona stoic about the possibility of a strike.

“I’ve got my bicycle,” he said. “I can ride that to work [about 3 miles] if I have to.”

Still, some riders agree with city officials, saying drivers are being greedy and stubborn in negotiations that could be roughest on the city’s most vulnerable citizens.

“They don’t think of the community they are affecting,” said Boyle Heights resident Adriana Flores of both drivers and MTA officials.

A strike would leave her husband without a ride to his janitor’s job, about 15 miles and two bus transfers away in Compton.

Times staff writers Antonio Olivo and Jeff Rabin contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MTA Driver and Rider Profiles

Drivers’ ethnic makeup

Black: 49.2%

Latino: 35.1%

White: 9.1%

Asian/other: 6.6%

Drivers

Women: 30.5%