Arizona bus strike highlights job woes

A fear of being relegated to part-time work is a prime concern of bus drivers who are on strike outside of Phoenix, Ariz., saying their bosses want greater rights to cut their hours or fire them.

Other areas of dispute include the firm's attempt to increase workers' health care contributions.

Their concerns reflect Friday’s tepid job numbers, which saw the addition of 162,000 jobs in July and a decrease of the unemployment rate to 7.4 percent, the lowest it's been since December 2008, close to the start of the financial crisis. Also last month, 37,000 stopped looking and were no longer counted as unemployed.

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Many of the jobs employers added last month were for lower-paying work at stores, bars and restaurants. Americans, indeed, worked fewer hours (34.4, down by 0.1 hour) for slightly lower wages ($23.98, down two cents from June) in July.

In Phoenix’s southeast suburbs, the Amalgamated Transit Union and First Transit, a company that operates on behalf of the Valley Metro public agency, have been embroiled in bitter talks since the beginning of the year to forge a labor contract for about 400 bus drivers.

Negotiations are continuing today, but the strike has cut about 57,000 people off from public transit.

On Wednesday, the firm said it had offered employees guaranteed salary increases ranging from 7 to 50 percent over three years, as well as health care concessions. The offers could not avert a strike.  

On Wednesday, union officials reported that 95 percent of its drivers had voted to reject First Transit's best-and-final offer. Another last-minute proposal by management failed to avert the strike.

ATU Local 1433 president Bob Bean said no deal has been reached, although a new offer on the "management rights" clause was sent to the union Thursday.

He said the original contract language would have allowed the company to convert all drivers to part-timers, cutting benefits and wages.

The low bid by First Transit -- which cut $77 million over 10 years from the previous contract -- showed the company's intentions, according to Bean.

Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union, said management’s attempts to put workers on part-time schedules would force drivers to try to find second jobs.

“You deprofessionalize it when you have bus drivers trying to scurry around trying to find additional income,” he said, adding that having a second job would disrupt drivers’ sleep schedules and endanger passengers.

“You make the act of driving a bus more dangerous. When people don’t have a regular work schedule and regular sleep patterns, and they have to perhaps run a bus in the morning and then be a game show host or report for Al Jazeera from 6 to 9, they’re not going to be fully focused on driving a bus,” Hanley said.

He also argued that putting workers on part-time schedules is intended to strip them of health care, calling the move “an anti-American idea that’s being imposed here by a Scottish company on American workers.”

First Transit, part of Scotland-based Firstgroup, manages transportation companies in the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

The company did not return calls or emails for comment.

Al Jazeera and wire services