Representatives of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, King County Metro’s union, met with a handful of reporters this morning—an event that was notable in itself, given that the union has never had a close relationship with the media. “We often walk away feeling like we’ve taken a bit of a beating in the press,” union president Paul Bachtel said.
In a candid, informative meeting that lasted just over an hour, union members (including two part-time drivers and one full-time driver) talked about the terms of the union’s contract with King County, the controversial downtown Ride Free Area, and the dangers of driving a bus.
Although Bachtel said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of ongoing negotiations between the union and the county, he did note that Metro’s union, unlike the union that tentatively agreed to forgo a cost-of-living wage increase last week, has access to arbitration if negotiations fall apart (an outcome many observers think is likely). That gives them more leverage over the county than unions without access to arbitration.
The Metro union has balked at proposals that they forgo a cost-of-living increase or make other concessions such as allowing their contract to be reopened next year, and Bachtel predicted today that Metro’s ongoing budget shortfall would lead to the layoff of as many as 200 part-time drivers (and fewer hours for full-time drivers).
The union members also discussed:
• The downtown ride-free zone. Metro allows riders to board buses downtown for free and pay when they get off. The city supports the ride-free area, arguing that it’s good for business, but drivers oppose it because it leads to conflicts with people who can’t or won’t pay. Those conflicts often take place at the end of a line, in far-flung suburban areas where police take longer to respond. “We’d like to see people pay when they get on, so that individuals who shouldn’t get on might not get on,” Bachtel said.
• Driver pay, which became a controversial topic after the conservative Washington Policy Center released a report claiming that drivers at Metro are overpaid. The report noted that 243 Metro drivers (out of 2,800) made more than $75,000 in 2009.
Bachtel acknowledged that some drivers do make substantial overtime “by working seven days a week.” However, he said that paying overtime is much cheaper than hiring new drivers. And he noted that Metro salaries overall have just kept pace, adjusted for inflation, with what they were 20 years ago. “If you look at our pay over the last two years, you’d say, ‘Oh, boy, they’ve gotten some substantial pay raises,” Bachtel said. “Over 20 years, though, we make about the same. … [In negotiations] we look at pennies, not dollars.”
• Plexiglas barriers, which Metro has
considered installing in buses to protect drivers. ATU executive board officer Neal Safrin said the proposal was “dead” because drivers didn’t like the shields. “We’re suggesting that the money they were contemplating putting into shields might be better spent on training [to] give us the skills we need to deal with very dangerous people,” Bachtel added.
