A general transit strike affecting thousands of Santa Clarita Transit riders is possible this month as MV Transportation, the City’s transit operator, tries to hammer out a new, leaner contract with its union-represented employees, SCVTalk has learned.
Over the last few weeks, word of a possible strike by MV Transportation bus operators has been passed around in emails by concerned bus riders and talk of the strike has steadily increased here on SCVTalk.
At issue, according to one of the emails: MV Transportation, which won the contract to operate Santa Clarita Transit 3 years ago, is losing millions of dollars on its contract with the City and has asked its “operators” to take a pay cut as a result. The email says the contract between MV and its operators expired on August 4th and has been extended for one month.
“MV has been the contractor for Santa Clarita Transit for the past three years. MV’s contract allows the city to extend the contract year-by-year until 2018 at the city’s discretion. ” the anonymous email says. “MV can choose to terminate the contract, but will have to pay a substantial sum for breaking the contract (reportedly $2,000,000) and also share in any costs the city incurs as a part of replacing MV with another contractor,” the email continues.
The Fairfield California-based transit company reported revenues of $706 million in 2009 and employs some 12,880 people, according to its website. A promotional video on the site says the company was founded in part by a former bus driver.
The email suggests that MV has been losing up to $2.5 million on its contract with the City of Santa Clarita per year, even as the City of Santa Clarita has modified its routes, cutting some and expanding service elsewhere.
“MV has allegedly been losing approximately $2.5M per year on the Santa Clarita Transit operation. Since MV won the bid, there have been changes in the transit department at the city, fuel prices have become more volatile, the economy has undergone considerable changes, and bus lines and runs have been added (757, runs on 797) and removed (Line 8, Line 747, Line 798),” the email says.
For those reasons, MV is reportedly asking its operators and employees to take a 15% pay cut, a reduction in guaranteed hours from 40 to 35 and to pay a greater share of their employee benefits.
The email, which appears to have been written by a concerned bus rider, goes on to say that the bus operators are asking riders to pressure the City Council into renegotiating its contract with MV Transportation.
I asked City Communications officer Gail Ortiz to comment on the anonymous email and she said that the parts of the email addressing the City’s contract with MV (as opposed to MV’s Contract with its operators), was “pretty darn accurate.”
She said the employee’s union and MV are negotiating in good faith and that the City of Santa Clarita is not a party to the negotiations or the contract. She did confirm, however, that MV is losing money on its contract with the City.
“I’m not comfortable commenting on how much they are losing. They have told us they are losing money on the contract,” she told me.
Ortiz said that, “Obviously we want to see them avoid a strike.” She said she doesn’t know if a strike is imminent, but she noted that if there is a strike, it will affect all aspects of the City’s transit service from local bus routes in the SCV to the commuter services that take Santa Claritans to work all over Los Angeles County to the Dial-a-Ride service, which is used by seniors and others in the community.
An average of 15,000 one-way trips are made on Santa Clarita Transit every day, according to Ortiz.
“If MV and the operators do not come to a satisfactory agreement, the operators will likely go out on strike. This could happen as early as September 3rd. The last time the operators struck was in September 2001. This continued for approximately 1 month and caused considerable disruption in the lives of many Santa Clarita residents, some of whom do not have alternative ways to get to work or school or to pursue daily living activities,” the email concludes.
Keep an eye on SCVTalk for more on this developing story.
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