No Negotiations in Sight to End Transit Strike

The first day of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority strike unfolded in slow-motion chaos Tuesday for hundreds of thousands of public transit passengers, who walked, rode bicycles and grabbed rides aboard all manner of alternative transport to get to jobs, shops and school.

Although both sides in the dispute between the MTA and the mechanics union appeared willing to make concessions on the key issue of who should pay for rising health insurance costs, there were no talks and no apparent progress.

“I have no reason for optimism that it’s going to be a short strike,” said Neil Silver, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1277. The local represents 2,200 active MTA mechanics and retirees. MTA drivers, supervisors and clerks all honored the walkout, which shut down buses, the subway and light rail lines.

County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, an MTA board member, was more optimistic.

“I believe we can solve this,” she said, adding that the issues are far simpler than those of the last transit strike, in 2000, which lasted more than a month. She said this strike “should be over in 10 days or less.”

Still, it was not clear when negotiations would resume. Each side said it was waiting for the other to make the next move.

Word of the work stoppage came late to many of the MTA’s 400,000 or so daily riders, making the Tuesday morning commute especially frustrating.

“How can they do this?” demanded Joe Hines, who usually takes the bus from Sherman Oaks to Taft High School in Woodland Hills. He heard about the strike only after arriving at his bus stop in the morning.

“What about the people that have to go to school?” he asked.

Morning rush-hour freeway traffic was heavy throughout Los Angeles County, although California Department of Transportation officials said it was not clear whether the strike was the reason. Few of the roughly 11 million people in the county use public transit: Studies show that only about 4% of work trips are made on buses and trains.

Coming at the same time as a strike of supermarket employees and wildcat walkouts by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies, the MTA work stoppage added to an overall sense of labor strife. All three disputes center on rapidly rising health care costs.

“First there’s the recall, then the supermarket strike and now the bus strike,” said Jill Gustafson, who moved to Southern California from Oregon four months ago and was trying to get from her home in Sherman Oaks to her job at a production company in Hollywood. “I’m just waiting for an earthquake.”

Gustafson, 29, was waiting for an MTA shuttle on one of the 22 routes run by private contractors. Other riders used cars if they had them, asked friends for rides or hopped into vans that plied the usual transit routes, taking advantage of the strike to create makeshift jitneys.

“Need a ride?” van drivers asked as they slowed near bus stops. The going fare seemed to be about $2 -- somewhat higher than the $1.35 charged by the MTA, and more than double the amount paid by regular riders who buy monthly passes.

Some riders gave up and stayed home, and some businesses suffered as a result.

“There’s no one here,” said Maria Garcia, a waitress standing gloomily in the doorway of a Salvadoran restaurant downtown with a single customer inside. “I took a taxi here for $12.”

MTA executives apologized to riders and responded to criticism that they had failed to warn them adequately. MTA Chief Executive Roger Snoble said the union had given the agency little notice of its strike plans.

“After 16 months of negotiations, we had less than 12 hours to react to a strike,” he told a news conference. “This is devastating to riders, and we’re focused on trying to help them out as much as we can.”

Transit officials scrambled to expand bus services operated by private contractors that would connect riders with bus lines run by other cities and transit agencies. Many bus lines run by the L.A. Department of Transportation and other cities in the county will accept MTA passes, as will Metrolink, said MTA Deputy Chief John Catoe. The city department runs DASH buses in several areas.

“These services will not replace the whole MTA system; that’s an impossibility, and not what we’re trying to do,” Catoe said. “We want to get people from east to west and north to south to connect with other services, so there’s a basic lifeline they can use.”

He added that todaythe MTA would hire more buses operated by private firms. MTA officials agreed, however, that this patchwork of services is not nearly up to handling all its riders.

They said the agency’s toll-free commuter phone line had been jammed most of Tuesday, in part because operators had honored the strike, forcing managers and other less experienced employees to staff the line.

Snoble said the agency planned to rely on a mediator who is handling its negotiations with the bus drivers union to work with the mechanics union as well. He added that the MTA was willing to resume negotiations with the mechanics.

The strike began at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. The two sides had talked last week after a 2 1/2- month hiatus, but failed to come to terms before a court-ordered cooling-off period ended.

The biggest issue facing negotiators is the cost of health care. The MTA pays about $533 a worker a month in health insurance costs; the employees’ share is no more than $6. The union blames skyrocketing costs for the insolvency of its fund that pays for the insurance and is asking the MTA to contribute more.

The agency has agreed to pay $4 million into the fund to restore it to solvency, an MTA official said, and has offered to raise its monthly insurance payments per worker to at least $634 -- up $101. The union has offered to increase members’ share of health insurance costs by $71, but says the MTA needs to pay $705 a month to keep health benefits at their current level.

Another major point of contention has been the MTA’s insistence that it take over administration of the health fund, which it argues has been poorly managed by the union. Union officials said Tuesday that they would be willing to share control of the fund with the MTA.

The two sides are also at odds over health care payments for retirees.

Wages have not been the central issue in the contract dispute, but labor and management disagree about them as well. The MTA said it had offered a raise of about 5% over four years. Silver said the offer was 3%, spread over the final two years of the contract. He would not say how much the union was demanding.

Silver, who said he would be willing to sit down with the MTA again if a mediator called the parties together, blamed the MTA for the strike. “I only hope and pray that the public does not suffer much,” he said. “But I’m not going to sacrifice my workers. Not now. Not ever.”

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn urged the two sides to get back to negotiations. Although a state-appointed mediator is assigned to the dispute, Hahn offered to help “in securing a mediator, neutral meeting place or anything else that may help both parties come to an agreement.”

As mayor, Hahn is an MTA board member. But he is barred from taking part in the negotiations because he has received campaign money from the union.

Snoble contrasted the benefits received by the mechanics with those enjoyed by most MTA riders, who tend to work in low-end jobs. “Our customers for the most part don’t have health care available to them, and if they do, they pay significant premiums. Most of these mechanics make over $50,000 a year and pay little or no premiums.”

He cautioned riders to prepare for a strike of some days.

“I hope it will be settled soon,” Snoble said. “But I don’t see it headed in that direction.”

*

Times staff writers Sue Fox and Daniel Hernandez contributed to this report.

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What’s operating: Metrolink Amtrak Antelope Valley Transit Authority Burbank Local Transit Carson Circuit Cerritos on Wheels Culver City Transit DowneyLINK El Monte Transportation Services Foothill Transit Gardena Municipal Bus Lines Glendale Beeline LADOT/DASH Long Beach Transit Montebello Bus Lines Norwalk Transit System Pasadena Area Rapid Transit System Santa Clarita Transit Santa Monica Big Blue Bus Torrance Transit

Service also will be offered on 23 bus lines operated by MTA contractors, including Line 888, which will parallel the Metro Red Line subway.

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Source: Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Los Angeles Times