Members of Portland-based Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 have chosen new leaders.

In mail-in ballots counted June 6, Jon Hunt was declared the new president and Sam Schwarz the new vice president.

Tom Wallace returned to a second term as financial secretary-treasurer.

The three offices are full-time staff positions. Also elected were the union’s Executive Board and unit liaison officers.

Local 757 has 4,100 members — mostly bus operators and mechanics — at 35 locations. TriMet, the Portland-area transit system, is the union’s largest and oldest unit.

This year, 20 of the union’s 49 elected positions were contested, and campaigning was intense for the top leadership spots. That likely increased turnout, which at more than 56 percent is considered high for union elections.

Hunt, currently the union’s vice president, outpolled Art Winslow, Tom Bernards and James Perez to win a three-year term as president.

The current president, Al Zullo, will retire after his term expires June 30.

Schwarz, currently on the Executive Board, also bested three other candidates. Wallace won against two challengers.

At 35, Hunt is one of the youngest members ever elected to the local’s highest office.

His father, Bill Hunt, is a retired Tri-Met bus driver and former Local 757 Executive Board officer. His brother Jeff also works at TriMet as a journeyman diesel mechanic and is a shop steward.

“I grew up talking about the union at the kitchen table,” Hunt said. “As a kid, I helped out at the union picnics.”

Hunt grew up in Vancouver, Washington, and graduated from Hudson’s Bay High School. He served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, earning the rank of corporal, and then returned home to work at Burlington Northern Railroad as a crane operator and truck driver in maintenance. In 1995, he took a pay cut to work at TriMet, where he began as a bus driver working a split shift in the morning and evening rush hours while attending Portland Community College. Later he became a maintenance helper, washing and fueling buses at TriMet’s Merlo Garage. He entered a diesel apprenticeship program, and graduated after three years. Along the way he was elected shop steward and Executive Board member, and vice president in 2003.

He lives in Beaverton with his wife and four children.

Hunt, along with other officers and staff, will be responsible for enforcing 22 union contracts, and renegotiating those that expire in the next three years. [The TriMet contract won’t come up for renegotiation until December 2009.] Hunt is also expected to be appointed to a seat on the Oregon AFL-CIO Executive Board, which Zullo now occupies.

Hunt said he hopes to unionize non-union bus companies, and win better contacts for members by applying bargaining tactics learned in classes of the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center.

Newly-elected officers will be sworn in July. 

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