Bus, Rail Drivers Go on Strike in L.A.

ByABC News
September 16, 2000, 3:29 AM

L O S A N G E L E S, Sept. 16 -- Bus and rail drivers with the MetropolitanTransportation Authority began walking off their jobs a minuteafter midnight this morning, plunging the nations second-largest cityinto a transit strike expected to affect hundreds of thousands ofpeople.

At the MTAs downtown bus terminal about 12 people, a few stillin uniform, quickly threw up a picket line.

The raucous group cheered and shouted as drivers began returningempty buses to the terminal.

Driver waved at the pickets as they chanted, Get that bus offthe streets.

Union officials said drivers had been instructed to finish theirshifts and then return the buses to their terminals and report totheir strike captains.

They will finish their assignments, turn in their equipment,leave their division and report for strike duty, UnitedTransportation Union spokesman Goldy Norton told The AssociatedPress shortly before midnight.

The strike came about two hours after the union and the MTAbroke off about 10 hours of contract negotiations, with both sidessaying a strike was now all but inevitable.

A Management Strike I regret having to put the riding public in Los Angeles Countythrough this ... But this is a management strike James Williams,president of the United Transportation Union, told reporters alittle more than an hour before the unions 12:01 a.m. strikedeadline.

We have actually been shoved out in the street, he added.So we will have our strike and well come back to the bargainingtable when this negotiating team is ready to bring with them ...the authority that is needed to sign an agreement.

MTA spokesman Mark Littman said it was the union that was toblame.

What just happened with the drivers union is a slap in theface to the public. Weve been talking to the drivers union formonths trying to get our operating costs down so we can put morebuses and trains on the road, he said.