Bus operators to take strike vote in Corvallis

CORVALLIS — City transit and school bus drivers in Corvallis are expected to vote Jan. 16 to reject a contract offer and authorize a strike.

The City of Corvallis contracts management of its bus system to Laidlaw, and so does Corvallis School District. Laidlaw has a rocky history of relations with its unions, including Port- land-based Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757.

In Corvallis, trouble began in 1996 with Local 757’s original organizing campaign, when Laidlaw fought to have city and school bus drivers together in the same bargaining unit, hoping to defeat the union drive. There are about a dozen drivers for the 11-route Corvallis Transit System, and about 50 school bus operators. The union agreed to combine the two, and won a 1997 union election.

Faced with a brick-wall negotiating stance, the union fought for and passed a 1999 local ballot measure that set city bus drivers’ wages at the average for the region. Wages jumped about $6 an hour to between $12 and $14 an hour. Since then, Laidlaw has said it won’t pay any more than the ballot measure requires, says Ron Heintzman, the ATU international representative assigned to bargain for the group. But that’s not what it means to bargain, Heintzman says.

“To be locked into third-party contract terms for over six years, with no opportunity to have any voice in changing those terms, was in our view not intended nor acceptable any longer,” Heintzman wrote in an e-mail explaining the union’s position to Corvallis city manager Jon Nelson.

Meanwhile, for the school bus drivers, Heintzman said it took six years for the company to agree to replace previous pay levels with a five-year, five-step wage schedule, and now the company is proposing to scrap that.