San Jose, Calif. — Monday Mar. 10, 1,500 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 265 who work in Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) went on strike, the first since the company’s founding in 1973.
The ATU and VTA entered negotiations in August. A key concern the ATU raised is arbitration and wages. Transit workers intended to finish negotiations by March to avoid working with an expired contract, a move that would save the company thousands as their employees would not receive retrograde pay. The move was not respected.
The ATU initially demanded a 24% raise over a 3-year period and then lowered it to a modest 18% over the same period. As talks reached an impasse, ATU pointed out that VTA administration has received raises in the range of $18,000 to $80,000. To this, the company responded to ATU with a 9% raise.
Over the years, Greg Richardson and other members of VTA administration have received class and compensation raises – while not providing the same benefits to their workers.
To determine the percentage of raises, VTA bought a study called “Classification & Compensation Study, and Workforce Development” in 2022. Because of this study, during the negotiations, Richardson and Carolyn Gonot, the CEO, offered the transit workers a $0.01/hour raise. Their explanation was that VTA workers are some of the highest paid in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, members of the VTA administration still received raises within the range of $20,000 to $80,000 in addition to bonuses.
Regarding arbitration, a representative from the ATU Ashley Olvera, a shop steward, stated that arbitration is a top priority. She explained, “They are trying to take away our rights as a union to arbitrate certain things. They basically do not want to give us our due and fair processes and make us at-will employees, where they decide and dictate what happens and if they can fire us on the spot or not.” She reiterated the strike is not about wages, and if it were, they would have settled already.
On benefits, Joban Dult, another employee, explained that currently, if an individual has a disability issue, they can keep their job after two years; VTA wants to reduce that to a single year. Regarding this reduction, Dult continued, “if you are not able to come back, they could terminate you.”
Both Olvera and Dult communicated that their pay does not allow them to live in San Jose. It is a story that is all too familiar to people: people need to live outside the city in order to work here, often commuting as far as Modesto or Los Banos in order to survive. On average, most VTA drivers earn roughly $91K a year, which is hardly enough to live in San Jose.
ATU Local 265 stressed the importance of community support in winning the strike.
If you want to support ATU, please go to their campaign on Action Network and demand that VTA come to the table and negotiate!
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