Thursday, May 30, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.
A day after striking drivers rejected by a 492 to 39 margin a proposed contract with the company running the local bus system, the system's management company laid down an ultimatum: Come back to work or lose wage increases and medical benefits.
ATC company officers held an early-morning press conference today to announce that the company would implement the proposal rejected by drivers Wednesday, but only those employees who return to work by 4 a.m. Friday will receive retroactive pay increases from March.
Those drivers who do not cross picket lines will lose their medical benefits and would receive pay increases in September at the earliest, the company said.
Both Amalgamated Transit Union and ATC representatives said this morning that negotiations tentatively scheduled for today are off.
"We have no plans to meet with them," ATC spokeswoman Valerie Michael said. "We have service to provide. The focus is to get service back to 100 percent."
Company officers accused the union negotiators of bad-faith bargaining in Monday night and Tuesday morning's 12-hour session. Michael said the union leadership had to agreed to support the proposed contract -- but within hours those leaders were saying the proposal would not pass a vote of the rank-and-file.
"No matter what I would say or what I would do, the union membership has the last word," said Local 1637 President Frank Opdyke, responding to the company charges.
Company officers said the rejection leaves them no room to maneuver.
"We believe that implementation of the agreement at this point is the next best step," ATC General Manager Jim Wolf said.
Opdyke said the union negotiators and leaders will meet today to discuss an organized response to the company's position.
"The threat to the drivers, threatening to pull their medical coverage, is a tactic to bust the union," he said. "This is uncalled for and unfair. It's just wrong."
He said union members, many of whom have families, are concerned about the company's decision.
"But is it going to destroy our resolve to go on with the strike? Absolutely not."
The union is taking its case and its picket signs to the Regional Transportation Commission, the government agency charged with overall responsibility for the bus system. Drivers have promised to keep picketing the agency's offices, on Grand Central Parkway next door to the Clark County Government Center, until the agency steps into the fray.
RTC representatives say they cannot, by the terms of the contract with ATC, get involved in the dispute.
About a dozen of the agency's 51 routes have been idle, and other routes are running minutes or hours late since the 10-day-old strike began. Agency and company representatives say about 60 percent of routes are covered, a point vigorously contested by union officials and rank-and-file, who argue that 15 percent to 20 percent of regular stops are getting service.
The RTC says the 150,000 riders a day the bus system would normally see has been cut in half to about 75,000 passengers.
Opdyke said the RTC is a legitimate target for the pickets because the agency has sided with the management company.
"They're trying to bust the union," he said, referring to comments attributed to RTC General Manager Jacob Snow that said drivers may not have the financial resources to endure a long strike.
"We may not have the financial wherewithal but we have the moral resolve to hold out as long as it takes," Opdyke said.
"I think the RTC should step in or this private company will attempt to destroy the transit system in Las Vegas," he said.
The union is joining local media in asking when and how much the management company would be fined for missed or late bus service.
The company's contract with the RTC says the company will be fined $300 for every bus round trip that is more than 10 minutes late and $500 for every route more than 20 minutes late or missed altogether.
Union members argue that the RTC's refusal to publicly discuss the fines is letting the company off the hook, potentially for millions of dollars.
RTC officials said early in the strike that the company would be fined. But agency representatives have modified that stance.
"We're not focusing on fines right now," RTC spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman said Wednesday night. "When the time comes when ATC and the union have settled, then we can talk fines."
She said the agency's legal advisors who told them that any discussion of fines could be interpreted as putting pressure on the company, which it cannot be law do during the strike.
"We cannot get involved," Reisman said.
Opdyke said he would meet today with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman -- who is not a member of the RTC's board of elected policy-makers from throughout Clark County -- in an effort to bolster local political support for the striking drivers.
Union shop steward Gene E. Smith said the members would take their message to political leadership throughout the region.
"Politicians out there need to support us," Smith said. "They're going to need support from the drivers in the very near future."
Union international representative Gary Rauen said the negotiators will continue to press the company while the union presses the political front.
"There has to be some major movement on the company's part," he said. But Rauen and other union negotiators will meet with the company today, he added.
"We're not going to be the ones walking away from the table," Rauen said.
But ATC's Michael said while her firm would not walk away from further negotiations, there appeared to be little hope of an immediate compromise. She said company representatives believed they had a proposal backed by the union leadership.
"At this point, we are feeling very, very betrayed," Michael said. "They called us to (Tuesday night's) meeting. They brought us this proposal, which we spent the whole night working on.
"The people who are losing the most are the people on the (picket) line. They think we created this proposal. We did not."
Union officials and rank-and-file said they could not support the contract because it simply does not provide adequate wage and health insurance provisions.
The contract would have provided 2 percent raises every six months, with a 2.5 percent raise at the contract end in September 2005. The proposal also would potentially increase the cost of health insurance for a family from $95 per month now to at least $120 per month by the end of the contract.
The proposal also would split future health insurance increases between the company and drivers, with the family plan going up as much as $50 more, to a total of $170.
The union's last proposal asked for 7 percent annual raises and no change to the existing health insurance system under which the company now completely covers single, "employee only" plans.
"They cannot expect employees to accept a wage increase but have every penny of that increase go to health insurance," Rauen said.
The money issues, however, are not the only things splitting the company and union. Drivers Wednesday said they would be far more willing to consider the company's proposals if working conditions were better.
Driver Dominic Santagata said company supervisors are abusive and ignore workers' concerns, the equipment frequently breaks down and passengers curse at or physically assault drivers.
"Nobody is our friend," Santagata said. "From the public, the RTC, ATC, nobody cares."
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