Published Saturday, July 13, 2002
MERCER COUNTY
A potential local public bus and shuttle strike looms Monday as union workers employed by the Mercer County Regional Council of Governments are set to vote Sunday on a new labor contract.
Members of Teamsters Local 261 rejected an earlier contract offer in June and have since approved going on strike if the latest contract is rejected, said Jim DeCapua, COG's executive director. The local's previous contract expired June 30.
Doug Robbins, Local 261's president, didn't immediately return a phone message left at his New Castle office late Friday afternoon.
Local 261 represents 28 bus drivers, mechanics and other support staff who work at COG's two transit systems: Mercer County Community Transit, which is primarily a transportation service for senior citizens and the handicapped run on behalf of the county; and the Shenango Valley Shuttle Service, a public bus service in Sharon, Hermitage, Farrell, Sharpsville and Wheatland that COG runs for those communities.
Wages and health care benefits were the main points of contention in the contract, DeCapua said. After the last contract was rejected representatives from COG and Local 261 hammered out a new tentative agreement on Wednesday.
"We renegotiated a number of issues that evidently were not acceptable to the Teamsters in the initial contract vote,'' DeCapua said. "At this juncture the ball is in their court. We offered the best we could as far as the contract is concerned.''
He declined to give terms of the contract except to say that is was for four years.
If the contract is rejected a strike could hit both transit systems Monday morning, he added.
"I'm hopeful they will give me more than 24-hours notice if they intend to strike,'' DeCapua said.
A chief concern is MCCT provides transportation to critical health-care services such as kidney dialysis. COG has developed a plan to try to operate the shuttle service in case of a strike, but DeCapua declined to say if that meant supervisors would take over driving duties.
"We have an obligation here,'' he said. "It's one thing to shut down public transit, but it's another to provide life-and-death transportation for dialysis. That's something you just don't walk away from.''
MCCT provides 75,000 passenger trips annually while SVSS has 125,000 trips a year.
If Local 261 approves the contract DeCapua said it would still have to be OK'd by the Mercer County Commissioners for MCCT, and a joint advisory board comprised of one elected officials from each of the five communities served by SVSS.