Villaraigosa Is Praised for Getting MTA Talks on Track

The last time acrimonious labor negotiations brought Los Angeles County’s transit system to a halt, it took an outsider -- the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- to get the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its striking drivers to the table.

This time, as the 35-day mechanics strike came to an end last week, it was a consummate insider who got the two sides talking again.

City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, the flamboyant former Assembly speaker whose surprise return to the negotiating table shook loose the stalemate, was singled out by both union chief Neil Silver and MTA Board Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky as the spur that brought them back together.

Villaraigosa didn’t negotiate the deal between the transit agency and its mechanics, and he didn’t close it. But he had credibility with labor as well as with the MTA board, and he used it along with skills honed in Sacramento to get the two sides talking again, according to the accounts of key participants.

“Without him getting involved the way he did, we’d still be on strike,” Silver said when it was over.

Months before the strike began, the transit agency had ruled that Villaraigosa and three other MTA board members -- Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, City Councilman Martin Ludlow and County Supervisor Gloria Molina -- should not be part of the negotiations because they had accepted campaign contributions from the union. But on Nov. 7, the same day members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1277 voted solidly to reject a “last, best and final” contract offer from the MTA, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled the four elected officials should be let back in.

Enter Villaraigosa. A former labor organizer who served as speaker of the California Assembly before his election this year to the Los Angeles City Council, he had clout with the union, well-honed chops for negotiation and a council district with one of the region’s most transit-dependent populations.

“His great claim in the Legislature was his ability to work with Republicans,” said former County Supervisor Ed Edelman. “What he developed in Sacramento, he brought to the MTA strike.”

On Nov. 13, Villaraigosa, Hahn, Ludlow and Councilman Tom LaBonge met with Silver at City Hall.

Villaraigosa had been dispatched by the MTA board to deliver a stern message: The vast majority of the 13-member board was unwilling to budge on its public pledge not to add more money to the mechanics’ contract.

Moreover, in a long MTA board meeting the day the four restricted members were allowed back into negotiations, Villaraigosa and the others discussed how much money the union was really asking for -- a 10.5% wage hike over three years, and a big jump in money allocated for retiree health benefits. That was about double what the MTA was offering.

“Antonio, well, both he and the mayor, they told me, ‘You ain’t getting that,’ ” recalled Silver. “I wasn’t comfortable, but I came away feeling like all of a sudden there, we had somebody coming from the bullpen who was going to put us together.”

Silver had been hearing the same stern message for weeks from the MTA and Yaroslavsky. But Silver said that when Villaraigosa delivered the news, for the first time, he listened.

“The reason I listened was simple,” Silver said. “It is a trust factor with Antonio.... Here was a guy who I’d known for at least 10 years, that I trusted, that has been around the block a few times.”

That night, Villaraigosa talked to both Silver and Yaroslavsky over the phone. The MTA and the union had not talked face-to-face since the transit agency declared an impasse and walked from the bargaining table in late October.

Since then, a budding personal animosity had seemed to join the policy dispute, with Silver and Yaroslavsky trading insults through the media and the transit agency spending at least $260,000 on ads that criticized the union.

Over the phone, Villaraigosa urged the two men to come together again for face-to-face talks. They met the next day, Nov. 14.

If Villaraigosa brought the union back to the bargaining table, it was Yaroslavsky who closed the deal, the two sides agree.

By 11 p.m. on Nov. 14, with the remains of Chinese takeout strewn around the rooms where the two sides were meeting, Yaroslavsky approached Silver.

“At this point in time, the only thing keeping those buses from rolling is you and me, Neil,” he told the union leader, according to the accounts of both men. The county supervisor then offered to soften his earlier position that the union would not receive “one penny more” in wages.

According to Yaroslavsky and others present, he pushed Silver to sell the idea of a settlement to his members -- even if the deal wasn’t perfect: “You tell your guys you got Zev Yaroslavsky, ‘Not-One-Penny-More Zev Yaroslavsky,’ to move,” he said.

By dinner time Nov. 16, “I just decided, ‘I’m going to close this,’ ” Yaroslavsky said. Villaraigosa at his side, the supervisor strode down the hall to the room in the County Hall of Administration where Silver and his aides were working.

Yaroslavsky offered an additional 2% wage increase, bringing the total package to a hike of nearly 7% over the life of the contract. And he yielded on a number of workplace issues on which the MTA’s top executives had previously refused to budge, including jettisoning an effort by MTA Chief Executive Roger Snoble to keep employee discipline files open for three years instead of one. He offered to send the health-care question to nonbinding arbitration.

The union boss listened, argued back.

At times, Silver said later, he looked to Villaraigosa for confirmation that what Yaroslavsky said was right.

“Antonio played a very important role,” Yaroslavsky said. “He just tried to keep everybody talking and on task.”

Finally, it came down to this, according to Yaroslavsky: Silver complained that salaried employees had three floating holidays, and union members had none.

“Neil asked for one floating holiday,” Yaroslavsky said. “I said, ‘Is that what it would take, Neil, to close this deal? One floating holiday?’ ”

Silver said yes.

Yaroslavsky offered the holiday, and it was done, the supervisor said.

The very next day, the buses and trains were rolling.