By Tom Wetzel (Sept 2006)
from Workers Solidarity #3
The Los Angeles MTA operates a vast transit network throughout Los Angeles County, with 16 bus divisions and four subway and light rail lines. There are about 5,000 bus and train operators in the UTU. The widespread de-industrialization and closing of unionized industrial plants in Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s has left the MTA's transit operation as one of the few places where African-American workers can get a job that has good pay and benefits. A decade ago about half the drivers were African-American.In recent years Latino drivers have become almost as numerous as the black drivers. There are also still some drivers of European descent, as well as Persians, southeast Asians, and other ethic groups, reflecting the cosmopolitan character of Los Angeles.
The pay and benefits at MTA, and the union's check on management power, are the product of a long history of struggle and sacrifice by Los Angeles transit workers. They dragged themselves out of poverty through their own efforts.
Prior to World War II, transit operator was a low-wage job in Los Angeles, and workers who dared to "talk union" were at risk of being fired. The two main private transit companies in Los Angeles in the early 20th century — predecessors of the present-day MTA — had been owned by Henry Huntington. Huntington was the Mr. Moneybags who financed the anti-union "open shop" movement in Los Angeles. This movement had emerged in 1903 as a challenge to the AFL unions. Huntington's management on the Los Angeles transit system was virulently anti-union. Strikes in 1919 and 1934 were broken by hiring permanent replacements. Finally, in 1942, taking advantage of a war-time labor shortage, the AFL Amalgamated Bus and Streetcar Workers Union (predecessor of the present-day Amalgamated Transit Union — ATU) defeated the Huntington management in a strike. This strike won the first union contract.
The two main predecessor companies of MTA were acquired by the government in 1958. This led to a jurisdictional agreement between the AFL Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and the ATU. BRT got the drivers and ATU got the mechanics. In 1970 BRT absorbed a number of smaller "railroad brotherhoods" and changed its name to United Transportation Union.
Management continually probes the unions for weakness — trying to get more part-timers, two-tier wage systems, contract out lines to private companies, or weaken driver protections in other ways. The transit workers have been able to fend off most of these attacks through their willingness to stand together and fight. Since 1960 there have been ten Los Angeles transit strikes. In recent years the MTA management has been squeezing the drivers to get out more service. Drivers used to have 15 to 20 minutes of layover time at the end of their runs. Now the layover is down to only 6 to 10 minutes — not enough time to relax, eat, and go to the toilet.
In the 1980s Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley — a liberal African-American Democrat and former cop — and right-wing County Supervisor Pete Schabarum cooperated in a major attack on the union. A large part of the transit network in eastern Los Angeles County was subcontracted to a private firm, Foothill Transit. But, as UTU drivers tell me, UTU never made the attempt to organize the Foothill drivers, to fight for parity with drivers at RTD (the predecessor of MTA). UTU rolled over. Eventually Teamster union apparatchiks began collecting dues from the Foothill Transit drivers. But Foothill pay levels are still way below UTU drivers at MTA. As long as Foothill Transit remains a low-wage sinkhole in the realm of Los Angeles public transit, it is a threat to the other transit workers.
The current chieftain at the UTU in Los Angeles is James Willams, General Chairman of the UTU Board of Adjustment — the MTA-wide UTU committee. He draws a CEO-level salary, over $300,000 a year. Williams is an African-American man of humble origins who moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the 1960s and began driving a bus for the RTD. Williams was groomed for his current job by Earl Clark, the chieftain of the UTU in the RTD era. The local presidents also make fat salaries. Rick Ortega, president of UTU local 1607, receives $120,000 — almost two and half times what a full-time driver makes without overtime.
Oppositionists in Local 1607 tell me they believe that Williams and Ortega probably got into being union leaders out of a sincere desire to help their fellow drivers, many years ago. As they got used to receiving huge salaries and no longer face the daily stress of driving a bus, they became "lazy,"the activists believe. The problem is, the UTU type of union institution is a "system"; it tends to shape the people who get involved in it. The union is now the leaders' personal fiefdom.
Until recently, Local 1607 activists say, Mr. Ortega would get around opposition at meetings by arbitrarily declaring the meeting "adjourned" without a vote. This would end the meeting. The members were ignorant of their rights, activists say, and were intimidated by the union leadership who surround themselves with a small circle of cronies. Over the years Ortega had learned various tricks for prosecuting grievances. "But he doesn't teach the members anything so they will be dependent on him," one driver told me. Activists want the union to teach members how to file grievances and deal with grievance hearings. The union had done nothing to develop the knowledge that drivers would need to participate effectively in the union. To empower their fellow drivers,activists in Local 1607 began by distributing leaflets explaining how the members can use Roberts' Rules of Order to defend their democratic rights in union meetings. Now, if Mr. Ortega tries to stop a meeting by declaring it adjourned, members respond by telling him: "You have to take a vote to adjourn a meeting. If you want to leave, that's fine. We'll continue the meeting without you."
A union where a leader can keep members in the dark and intimidate them is a recipe for a kleptocracy. Here's an example: At the time of the last strike in 2003 union members came to believe that Mr. Ortega had been pocketing $7,500 a month in dues owed to the international union. He'd been telling the international union certain drivers were sick and were therefore exempt from dues. When these drivers tried to collect their $600 strike pay during the walkout, the international told them they weren't supposed to get strike pay because they were listed as out on sick leave. In fact they had been working. One of the things the members of Local 1607 have been fighting for now is an open accounting of the use of union funds.
In addition to the salary James Williams receives, dissidents allege that he has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars of union funds without authorization to defend himself against sexual harassment complaints of female drivers. At the end of the last strike in 2003, activists tell me that the meeting to vote on the proposed contract was poorly advertised among the UTU membership, with only 200 of the 5,000 drivers showing up. No copy of the proposed contract was provided. Mr. Williams insisted they vote on the contract after describing the alleged contents for about 15 minutes. He claimed that the contract contained no loss of benefits. But workers later discovered that in fact the contract included a cut in health benefits, with a new requirement for $50 copays.
Theft of union funds are not peculiar to this local in the UTU. The two international presidents of the UTU before the current president are currently serving time in prison for embezzlement of union funds.
Challenging James Williams is no easy task, however. UTU at MTA is divided into five locals. Drivers would normally have contact with the colleagues in their own operating division and local. Special effort would be needed to develop contacts across locals. This creates a speed bump against the spread of a rank-and-file movement that might challenge the leadership. Williams is not elected directly by the UTU members, but is selected by the Board of Adjustment, which is made up of the five local presidents.
Oppositionists in Local 1607 have a vision or program for union reform. First, they'd like to see the union funds that currently go to huge salaries put into the strike fund. They want any paid positions limited to the pay rate of a driver. Second, they advocate term limits — a maximum of six years in a row in office — to avoid the syndrome of domination by entrenched chiefs. For officers who are paid, term limits will force them to go back to driving a bus after a certain period. If the officers know they're going to go back to the stressful job of driving a bus once again, that will be a motivation to fight harder for their colleagues. Third, the oppositionists want a system of elected shop stewards in the operating divisions so that the drivers can more readily defend themselves on the job. Finally, activists in Local 1607 also put forward a vision of a "solidarity movement" that would link MTA drivers with other transportation workers in the Los Angeles area - port truckers, line-haul truck drivers, taxi drivers, and bus drivers at the suburban "munis" and private contract operations like Foothill and Laidlaw.
Activists in Local 1607 are also sympathetic to the idea of a driver/rider alliance to fight MTA management. "I like [the Bus Riders Union]," an UTU activist told me. "They want what we want." He doesn't understand why the UTU leadership has not tried to develop a better relationship with the BRU.
The undemocratic power that an unelected general chairman wields at the MTA UTU is derived from the UTU international constitution. Gaining control of an international union convention to change this would be no easy task. The difficulty was illustrated by the recent failure of the effort to do that by Rail Operating Crafts United (ROCU). ROCU was a grassroots effort to build unity among railway workers through a democratic merger of UTU with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainment. After a couple years of effort, ROCU has apparently thrown in the towel.
It's hard to see how the "solidarity movement" the UTU activists talk about could come about except through the formation of a new, independent transportation workers organization.