Hundreds of Regional Transportation District bus drivers, light-rail operators, mechanics and support staff voted overwhelmingly Sunday to reject the district’s contract offer and authorize union leaders to call a strike.
Not that a strike is imminent.
Dave Minshall, spokesman for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001, said, “The ball’s in RTD’s court. The workers have said very emphatically, ‘What’s on the table is not nearly enough.’ It’s up to RTD to make a offer that recognizes reality.”
He said the union members voted 95 percent to reject the contract and 95 percent to authorize a strike.
“A strike is imminent only if RTD doesn’t put a reasonable offer on the table,” Minshall said.
RTD spokesman Scott Reed said: “We believe that it’s a very fair and substantial offer.”
He said the district is willing to bargain.
“We are more than willing to go back to the negotiating table to see if there are things that can be rearranged. If they want to put more in health and welfare rather than wages, if there are work rules issued that can be changed to afford more money for the contract, we’ll look at that,” Reed said.
Minshall said the union’s earlier offer of arbitration is still open.
Union members went Sunday to a union hall just north of Denver to cast their vote on the two questions. The contract offer would have seen workers get between a $1.80-per-hour and a $2.05-per-hour raise over the three years of the contract. Union representatives said the raise didn’t do enough to address potentially skyrocketing health care costs.
The mood during the voting at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall, which Local 1001 borrowed for the vote, wasn’t optimistic.
“Not only no, but (expletive) no,” said light-rail operator K.D. Baker.
Bus driver Ron Short said no one is eager for a strike.
“We’re not asking for the world,” he said. “We’re asking for a fair shake. We need to take care of our families.”
The proposal would have raised top hourly wages for bus drivers and light-rail operators from the current $18.05 to $19.85 at the end of the contract. Top hourly wages for certain mechanics would have gone from $23.15 to $25.20.
“As far as the wage rate increase, it’s the largest wage rate increase RTD has ever offered,” Reed said.
Under the proposal, RTD would also have paid slightly more per month toward an employee’s health costs.
William Jones, the union’s general counsel, said that in one projection, annual employee health care premiums could be $2,700 higher in three years than they are currently. However, employees with the $1.80- per-hour raise would have been making only $2,340 more per year than they are now.
Reed said there is no guarantee that health care costs would rise. A six-member board would have to vote unanimously to raise employee costs, something that hasn’t happened in the past four years.
The union must give RTD 72 hours’ notice if it intends to strike.
Reed said RTD has a contingency plan to operate about 45 percent of its fixed-route schedule if Local 1001, which represents half of RTD’s scheduled-service bus drivers and all its light-rail operators, strikes.
However, RTD predicts it would be able to operate only 26 percent of its service if employees of First Transit, RTD’s largest private bus contractor, also decide to strike.
Those employees, represented by ATU Local 1755, overwhelmingly rejected a contract offer in February.
First Transit and union officials will sit down with a federal mediator this week.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
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