Central Ohio Transit Authority bus drivers, mechanics and maintenance workers who have been on strike since Monday voted 353 to 158 to accept a deal that will put them back to work – and return buses to the streets. COTA’s board of trustees then voted to ratify the agreement, which will send buses out Thursday morning.
The workers, members of Transport Workers Union of America Local 208, voted the same agreement down on Monday night. The agreement would have given the workers a 7 percent raise over three years but decreased their benefits.
This morning, COTA officials sent out notice that the board of trustees will hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. to ratify a labor contract. The board voted shortly after 5:30 to ratify the agreement.
The union’s initial decision to vote down the agreement kept COTA buses in garages yesterday through Red, White & Boom, the city’s largest Downtown celebration of the year.
Andrew Jordan, the union’s president, said the union’s executive board voted unanimously to recommend the agreement and to ask the union’s members to vote on it again. Nothing in the agreement has changed, Jordan said.
“There was a misunderstanding of the membership, and everyone wasn’t able to vote,” Jordan said of the union’s Monday night vote. “Some didn’t understand everything that was in the package.”
Jordan said more than 500 of the union’s 660 members voted on Monday. COTA officials have said the union voted the agreement down 270-238.
Union members began meeting at 10 a.m. today at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 189 union hall on Kinnear Road, on the Northwest Side. The vote tally was released shortly before 2:30 p.m.
Jordan said Red, White & Boom had nothing to do with the timing of the strike.
“We didn’t just ‘go on strike,’ ” Jordan said. “There were some issues that we needed to get worked out.”
Jordan said the union commenced its strike despite the tentative deal because the union’s members “don’t feel like they can trust the authority to do the right thing.”
He said the union has issues with the number of hours that drivers and mechanics work and with how employees are disciplined. It also is concerned about safety and with wages, retirement benefits and the amount members pay for health insurance.
“The public thinks we’re greedy and that we’re the No. 1-paid transit in the country,” Jordan said. “And that’s not true.”
COTA has argued that its bus drivers are the highest-paid in the country when wages are adjusted for cost of living. The highest-paid bus driver earned $93,000 in 2011, according to the authority’s 2012 Strike Contingency Plan. The highest-paid maintenance employee earned $92,000 in 2011. Union workers, however, point out that those figures are a result of overtime pay.
W. Curtis Stitt, COTA’s president and CEO, said yesterday that “the ball is in the union’s court” to come up with a deal that would bring bus drivers and mechanics back to work and return public-transportation buses to the streets.
“We don’t believe that we need to continue to go back to the table,” Stitt said after meeting with COTA’s Board of Trustees yesterday afternoon. “We don’t believe that there’s really the will on behalf of the union executives to get a deal done.”
The transit authority has no backup plan to deal with the strike, though COTA officials are “considering their options,” Stitt said.
“We don’t have a plan for putting service back on the street today, tomorrow or the next day,” he said.
The trustees gathered in a closed meeting but made no decisions about how to respond to the union. Stitt said he did not know why the union voted down the agreement.
About 125 workers picketed outside COTA facilities at Fields and McKinley avenues yesterday, carrying umbrellas to ward off the sun.
John Giles, a body-shop employee who has worked for COTA for 24 years, said he went on strike because his expenses for retirement and health benefits would increase under the agreement.
Other pickets said they were on strike because of unfair working hours and conditions.
Joe Day, who has been a COTA bus driver for 30 years, said he sometimes spends
14 hours at a COTA facility but is paid only for eight hours. Day said he’s paid only while behind the wheel, and COTA routes sometimes leave him with time in between driving.
Meanwhile, would-be bus riders either stayed immobile or found other ways to travel through Columbus.
Yesterday afternoon, Sean and Faith Ransom of Lewis Center sat along the riverfront Downtown with their boys, Ben, 8, and Josh, 9.
This was their first Red, White & Boom. Another first will have to wait — taking a COTA bus to the show.
“I grew up in Columbus and rode COTA all the time while I was here,” Mrs. Ransom said. “It helped.”
She said although the drive into Downtown was fine, they were sure the drive out would be more difficult.
“Leaving is going to be a nightmare,” she said. “It would have saved us a lot of money on parking, too.”
SOURCE: Columbus Dispatch
