When you think about the dynamics of this bus strike, you start to realize why it’s taking so long to settle.
Start off with the fact that the company that operates Sun Tran is bargaining from a position of strength.
Professional Transit Management is nominally a private company, but it loses nothing, financially speaking, because of the Teamsters strike that has gone on for a week now. The city of Tucson continues to pay the company’s management fees. And during the strike, the city simply adjusts what it pays the company for bus services, fuel and maintenance.
It’s stressful for them, yes, but no wonder management company officials haven’t come back to the negotiating table after rejecting the Teamsters’ last offer. They don’t have to.
And no wonder Teamsters Local 104 president Andrew Marshall so quickly reversed himself after I published his comments last Sunday. Marshall told me that “The fares need to be raised, or the routes need to be reduced, if you can’t do both” and that such changes “would have created a more amenable situation for negotiation.”
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By Sunday afternoon, Marshall was saying that he hadn’t said that, or did not mean it as a comment on the current situation, and Bus Riders Union leader Brian Flagg was labeling it a misquote. Nobody called and said this to me, mind you, but they said it to each other and their supporters.
Why? I think it comes back to this imbalance in bargaining power. The Teamsters need friends. Resentment over the strike is building to such an extent that a group of riders is planning a protest of the strike this morning at Ronstadt Transit Center.
The Bus Riders Union and its allies on the City Council opposed the route changes and fare increases proposed last December that Marshall said in my column he supported. In this sense, the interests of the Bus Riders Union and Teamsters Union really are not in sync. But, the Teamsters need them to be allies, because otherwise they’re without many friends.
Voila! A misquote is born.
While the company may not have much of a financial interest in resolving the strike, the city that provides the money to run the bus system does have an interest. Council members know riders are suffering, many are voters, and they sincerely want the strike over.
But legally, all city officials are prohibited from inserting themselves into the negotiations. So the one entity on the management side that has a strong political interest in resolving the matter can’t directly get involved.
That hasn’t stopped elected officials from trying. Mayor Jonathan Rothschild told me this Thursday, in a statement he’ll be amplifying today:
“I am strongly urging both sides to return to the negotiating table and resolve their differences. The strike is hurting the community. ... Both parties, the private company and the union, need to come back to the table and sit at the table until they fully understand each other’s solutions.”
Council members Regina Romero and Paul Cunningham called on the new city manager, Michael Ortega, to get involved.
Even if the management company consents to resume negotiations, as it should, it’s hard to see how it’s going to find much money for concessions to the Teamsters. The company doesn’t create any of its own revenue, so its only flexibility is in how it manages the money it’s handed by the city, the Regional Transportation Authority and the federal government.
Flagg told me Thursday that the city could find money to put toward the problem if it really wanted to. Where?
“When people want to get creative and find money, they find creative ways to do it,” he said.
While the city would undoubtedly like to shift a million or two toward Sun Tran to help solve the contract impasse, credit rating agencies have been warning that increasing transit and other costs are undermining the city’s creditworthiness. So there’s not much the city can offer without raising its borrowing costs.
The Teamsters have alleged that in 2013 and 2014, the company handed back to the city $2.2 million that was to go to employee wages. In 2014, the two sides were negotiating, and that money could have gone toward wage increases, Marshall told me.
But the company says that money was budgeted for new employees and services that were never implemented. As a result, the company never even received the $2.2 million that the Teamsters are referring to. If so, that point is moot.
It’s another example of how the convoluted, three-party dynamics of the labor conflict make it hard to understand, let alone resolve.
