Often at this time of year, we’re treated to the laments of the Port Authority of Allegheny County having to curtail service or raise rates—or both—unless it receives more money.

This year is different—we’re being told the authority will go bankrupt unless its union bus and trolley workers accept an independent fact finder’s recommendations for a new contract.

DAN ONORATO

County Chief Executive Dan Onorato has withheld $27 million generated by the new drink tax and earmarked for the authority until management and the union come to an agreement. If they do not, he will allow the authority to go belly up—perhaps as soon as year’s end.

“When and if service stops …fingers are going to be pointed, it will shut down,” Onorato said. “Releasing the $27 million will only help for a few months.”

He said the report's recommendations address the authority's legacy costs, which he called its biggest problem with long-term stability.

Three days earlier, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85’s executive board dismissed the recommendations in the fact finder’s report as “concessions.” The authority board unanimously approved accepting them. Rank and file members did not vote.

The report was compiled by Dickinson School of Law professor Jane Rigler, who was appointed by the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to help both sides reach a settlement.

Among its recommendations:

•A 3 percent wage increase for each of the next three years, raising the average bus-trolley operator’s wage to about $25.70 an hour;

•Requiring employees to work 40 hours a week before receiving overtime pay;

•Raising employee health care premiums, medical and prescription co-pays from 1     percent to 3 percent; and

•Requiring most employees to reach age 60 and have 30 years of service in order to qualify for full retirement benefits.

Patrick McMahon, president and business agent of Local 85, said the higher health care contributions would effectively erase the wage increases, and noted that full retirement benefits are now available after 25 years of service with no age requirement.

“Part of me thinks they want us to go on strike,” he said.

Although a possibility, authority operators have not gone on strike since 1992. Nonetheless, Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and several private employers are preparing to help workers get to and from town. More than 40 percent of all Downtown and Oakland workers and students use public transportation.

Lucinda Beattie, the partnership’s vice president of transportation, said the partnership and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development have a website— KeepPittsburghMoving.com, which is functioning as a clearinghouse for information for employers on how to plan for a disruption of transit service.

“The transportation needs of each employer are unique to that employer,” Beattie said. “On the website, there is a Transit Contingency Planning Checklist which lists steps that an employer can take in identifying the needs of their employees.”

Beattie said she knows of no employers seeking to rent vehicles from private carriers and then replicate Port Authority routes. The potential liabilities, she said, are too great.

She also stressed these contingencies are being explored only as a remedy to a possible strike.

“Please don’t confuse my comments about contingency planning for a strike with planning for the bankruptcy of the whole transit system,” she said. “The possible bankruptcy of the Port Authority is a completely different issue in terms of the magnitude of its impact. Let’s hope that the situation doesn’t ever reach that point.”

(Send comments to cmorrow@newpittsburghcourier.com.)