As of press time on Tuesday, talks were scheduled to resume at 2 p.m. between the Metropolitan Transit Authority and its mechanics union, after MTA stepped down from demanding control of the mechanics’ healthcare fund.
By Ryan O’Quinn/Special to The Malibu Times
Hundreds of commuters in Malibu and hundreds of thousands of commuters around Los Angeles were without public transportation following a strike last week by employees of the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
On Oct. 14, 2,200 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, mostly comprised of MTA mechanics, along with sympathetic bus drivers, walked off the job in a dispute over health benefits.
Many Malibu employees who commute to work daily are dependent on the MTA’s bus and rail lines to get to work.
In a separate contract dispute, bus drivers, members of the Teamsters Union who work on 13 bus and rail lines contracted by MTA, went on strike, inconveniencing an additional 10,000 commuters.
According to estimates, about 400,000 people were stranded last week.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the third district, which includes the city of Malibu, was very optimistic going into negotiations last weekend and early this week. Yaroslavsky, who is also chairman of the MTA Board of Directors, vowed to have resolution within 36 hours. When that did not happen, Yaroslavsky announced that a proposal had been presented and urged the union to consider the offer. No details of the plan were disclosed.
Some Malibu employees were hit extra hard by the MTA strike, including a worker at Ralph’s in Malibu who, until last week, rode the bus to work. The employee who was identified as Flora said she catches a ride with friends or co-workers every morning from her home in Van Nuys to come to the picket line at Ralphs, where she is on strike in a dispute over health benefits as well. At the end of the day, she finds a fellow striker to take her back home in the evening.
“Every day in the morning, in the night, she comes here,” said a fellow employee. “Other workers or others give her a ride. She looks for a ride every day.”
Flora, like others in the same situation, who depended on public transportation just to come to the picket lines, are finding it more and more difficult to make their way to work.
“A lot of our people ride the trains or take the buses to work every day,” said Ron Rice, a butcher at Ralphs who commutes from Burbank. “I’ve been through five of these strikes now.”
Luis Gaytan commutes to Malibu from Santa Clarita to work every day. Due to the MTA strike, he now gets up earlier and gets home later than he ever did before. He wakes up in the early morning hours in order to pick up his son from the San Fernando Valley, drop him at work in Westwood and come to Malibu. At the end of the workday he makes the same trek in reverse because his son has no way to get to or from work.
“It’s costing me a lot of money. I’m putting extra miles on my car,” Gaytan said. “I get out of here, pick up my son, drop him off, then go to my house.”
One employee said her daily wages were all going toward buying gas to come to work. “What I am getting here is $40 a day. The $40 goes for my gas, ” said Olga Amaya, who commutes nearly an hour to Malibu from Sun Valley. “My nephew and my neighbors are helping me. I’m not as stressed as I should be. I am thankful for their help. We are praying everything will work out.”
Jay Yoshida and Haeng-Ja Vigil, who carpool from Arleta, said they find the freeways and surface streets much more congested now than before the MTA strike. They have a friend who cannot get to work in Malibu at all because the busses are not operating.
As of press time, the MTA was meeting face to face with members of the bus drivers and mechanics unions in hopes of reaching an agreement on their contracts. The drivers have been working without a contract since June.