Hahn Urges MTA to Go to Arbitration

As striking bus and train mechanics prepared to vote today on whether to go back to work, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn called on fellow Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members Thursday to submit their dispute with the union workers to an arbitrator.

“I’m usually not a fan of binding arbitration, but I think if we don’t find some way out of this, I don’t know how we’re going to get these buses going again,” Hahn said in an interview.

Because the crux of the dispute between the board and the union is over the cost of providing health benefits, the mayor said, both sides should “submit their methodology to a neutral party.”

Union mechanics walked off the job Oct. 14. The strike has idled most buses and trains in Los Angeles County, forcing about 400,000 commuters a day to either stay home or find new ways to get around.

In order to overcome objections by the MTA that arbitration would give an outside party control over internal financial decisions, Hahn suggested that an escape hatch be built into the deal: The arbitration would not be binding; a “super-majority” of MTA board members could overturn the arbitrator’s decision.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who chairs the MTA board and has been its primary spokesman on the strike, did not return phone calls seeking comment about the mayor’s statement. MTA Chief Executive Roger Snoble declined to comment, referring calls to Yaroslavsky.

Neil Silver, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1277, has called for binding arbitration but said Thursday that he had not heard of Hahn’s proposal until contacted by a reporter and had no comment.

Silver’s immediate focus is today’s union vote on what the MTA calls its “last, best and final” contract offer.

The agency has proposed raises of 3% over three years plus a phased-in increase of 81 cents per hour for each employee. In addition, the MTA would contribute $4.7 million to the union’s nearly insolvent health-care fund and would increase the agency’s monthly contribution for health benefits. But the MTA wants mechanics to pick up a greater share of their health insurance costs and has sought more control of the health fund’s administration.

Every member of Local 1277, which represents about 2,100 active workers and about 700 retirees, will be allowed to vote. The balloting will be monitored by state officials, the union said. Silver said he expected the results to be tallied and announced by late afternoon.

If a strike is supposed to be a pressure-cooker, forcing management to come across with more money and benefits in part because of public scrutiny, this one seems to have generated little power.

Until the mayor’s statement Thursday, there had been few public remarks by local leaders on the walkout.

While the MTA has spent about $260,000 on radio and television advertisements disparaging the strike and has hired a media consultant for an additional $50,000, the union has mounted no such public relations campaign. Its leaders are wary of the media and have declined to enlist the help of powerful local labor leaders. Elected officials, including Hahn, say Silver has not asked for their assistance either.

As a result the AFL-CIO, the umbrella labor organization whose leaders organized rallies in support of MTA bus drivers when they walked out in 2000, has been quiet on this strike.

Miguel Contreras, leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said the mechanics union simply has not been as aggressive at outreach as the drivers union was in 2000.

The drivers “sent out people to talk to community groups, to churches, and got other unions involved,” Contreras said. “The ATU has made a decision not to do that. That is not their style.”

Contreras said that Silver did not notify him before calling the strike and that the mechanics union had not asked for help since then, other than to provide a forum for news conferences.

Hahn and other pro-labor politicians on the MTA board -- silenced by an internal legal ruling forbidding anyone who has taken more than $10 in union contributions from participating in the labor talks -- have for the most part also refrained from public statements about the strike, citing concerns about breaking state conflict-of-interest laws.

Friends of labor in Sacramento, while privately offering support, have also held back, worried that a public squabble would make the MTA look bad in Washington and jeopardize much-needed transportation funding.

Silver said the labor organization could not afford to buy ads or hire a high-priced media consultant. The union does have a spokesman, San Fernando Valley-based Dan Ritey, who represents the mechanics as well as other union locals and nonprofit organizations with his home-based business, Smart Words.

Silver confirmed that he had not yet asked Contreras or allies in government to step up the heat in a public campaign against the MTA board.

“I have been waiting on the newspapers and relying on the press,” Silver said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Martin Ludlow, one of the pro-union MTA board members who is barred from voting on the contract, offered another reason that local political and labor leaders had refrained from going all out for the mechanics.

Times have changed since 2000, when the drivers struck, he said. The economy is weak, wildfires have ravaged the community and there’s just not a lot of appetite for a big labor fight.

Constituents, he said, “are scrambling. They are not trying to figure out how to get to the picket line.... They are trying to figure out how to get around and how to survive.”

The MTA board -- its resolve unchallenged because of the absence of several members who are close to labor -- declared an impasse in the talks last week. That step paved the way under federal and state labor laws to go directly to the union’s membership with the agency’s offer, and to follow up by hiring replacement workers if desired.

The union vote begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Los Angeles Convention Center.