So, let me get this straight. COTA is going broke. It is already 75% subsidized and has been forced to pare routes, and yet the union thinks it deserves a 4% raise every year. Folks, this is why cities go broke...[/size]
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Strike might strand students
By Annie Hall
Published: Thursday, June 30, 2005
If the Central Ohio Transit Authority bus drivers go on strike, students such as Dan Carlson might have to find new ways to get to campus.
"It saves me the cost of having a car and the insurance, gas and parking expenses a car takes to operate," said Carlson, a first year graduate student in biology.
If COTA does strike Carlson said he would like to think he could support them.
"I support labor and their right to make a decent living," he said. "But it's hard to support the bus drivers because it affects me."
Monday afternoon COTA management and Transit Workers of America Local 208 representatives voluntarily returned to the bargaining table and, at the last minute, asked the State Employee Relations Board's arbitrator to leave the negotiations.
Many thought negotiations were over when the drivers and mechanics union accepted SERB fact-finder Phillip Sheridan's recommendations by a 430-to-29 vote and the COTA Board rejected the report by a 10-to-2 vote last week.
BuckID cardholders use COTA to get to and from home, school and work, 2,800 times each summer quarter, said John Palmer, COTA's spokesman. Given the COTA Board's rejection of Sheridan's report released June 17, there is a good chance the union drivers and mechanics will go on strike, perhaps leaving those riders stranded.
But Bill Lhota, COTA president and CEO, said 80 percent of all riders' needs will be met in the event of a walk-out.
COTA intends to bring in 74 temporary bus drivers with all of the qualifications of COTA's regular drivers from a national company that provides drivers when strikes occur.
"Nobody wins in a strike," Lhota said. "I'm hopeful that we can reach an acceptable compromise but we must prudently manage this organization."
Theotis L. James, president of Local 208, said, "there's always hope. We'll get there (to a resolution). It might take a minute, but we'll get there."
Most of the contentious issues go back 30 years, said Dianne McLinn, COTA's Vice President of Human Resources and Labor Relations.
Eighteen issues were negotiated with the Sheridan's four major issues causing the deadlock.
Wages
COTA proposed a wage freeze for drivers for the first year of the contract and a 2 percent raise across the board in the second and third years. COTA also proposed a "significant reduction" in wages paid to some mechanics.
Local 208 proposed 4 percent increases in each year of the contract and no reduction in the rate of pay for mechanics.
Sheridan recommended a 2 percent raise upon ratification of the contract; a 2 percent raise effective January, 2006; a 1 percent raise effective July 2006; a 2 percent raise effective January, 2007; and a 1 percent raise in July, 2007. Mechanics reductions were recommended for new hires only.
Full Story
Columbus Townhall > Forum > Politics > Local (Moderators: Peter, CTH Public Relations)
Topic: Columbus, largest US city with no public transit
