The workers set up their picket lines on March 4 after rejecting a Twin Cities Metro Transit offer by a 94 percent margin two weeks earlier. The strikers are members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local Local 1005.

In addition to offering a paltry 1 percent wage raise, the Metro Council, which runs Twin Cities Metro Transit, is demanding that all retiree health benefits for new-hires be eliminated, and that the workers pay up do $136 per month for health insurance. Under the old contract, Metro Transit pays two-thirds of the health insurance costs for workers who retire at age 55. To receive this benefit, workers are required to have at least 10 years on the job at Metro Transit if they were hired before 1995, 15 years between 1995 and 2000, and 17 years if they were hired after 2000. The company is demanding that the minimum years of employment required to qualify for this retirement benefit be raised to 17 years for all current employees, and that all retirement benefits be eliminated for future employees.

The bosses argue that they do not have enough money to pay for workers’ health care because the costs are “soaring out of control.” Metro Council Chairman Peter Bell told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the transit workers had a “Ferrari” health plan. In a letter to the editor entitled “Why transit workers won’t get a better deal,” in the February 23 Minneapolis Star Tribune, Bell wrote, “Union leaders are asking taxpayers to dig deeper to subsidize a level of benefits that few taxpayers enjoy. That is neither fair nor realistic.”

Minnesota governor Timothy Pawlenty openly backed the Metro Transit bosses against the strikers. “We don’t want a strike,” he said before the walkout, “but we cannot continue to give lifetime health care benefits. We’ll continue to give them to current employees, but not to new ones.”

Strikers have rejected these arguments. Local 1005 president Ron Lloyd said the first day of the walkout that the Metro Council was trying to bust the union. Lloyd told a February 23 Minnesota Public Radio news reporter, “We’ve given up wage increases, cost of living, and we’ve changed some work rules so management could get by cheaper in order to keep that health insurance. And now 25 years later…they want to take those insurances away.”

Teresa Baird-Lundblad, a garage secretary-maintenance clerk at the Heywood garage in Minneapolis said, “I think it’s a travesty. It’s unfair to the new-hires, the newest drivers. It is unfair to retirees. It is unfair to people who stay there because the benefits are good. And in the long term, the benefits are what people stay for.”

“This is not a strike over pay-raise-type issues,” Michael Rafim, a bus driver picketing at the Sixth Avenue bus barn, told the Militant. “It’s about our health care. If we let them go after the new guys, they’ll just find a way of getting rid of the rest of us and then we’ll all be in trouble. What they are offering us is like telling somebody to jump up in the air so you can go cut their legs off.”

Clarence, another driver walking the picket line, said, “They have the money, but they’re not giving us anything. Their wage increase is actually just a decrease.

“This job takes a toll on your body,” he continued. “There are a lot of guys who have many serious health problems because of the work. We need that health care. I know Metro Transit has its problems but we gotta live, too”.

Outside the North Cleveland Garage in St. Paul, John, a mechanic for 31 years, said, “the Metro Council is forcing us out on strike. They don’t want to pay the health care. What they want is more concessions from our union. They’re trying to use us as an example to go after other workers.”

On the same picket line, Byron, a welder for 30 years, said, “that’s why we’re standing out here. This isn’t just about us. Some of us will be retiring soon but we need to protect the young people as well as ourselves. When you work on those buses you breathe in a lot of fumes from the diesel fuel. And when I started we used to work with asbestos, too.”

The strikers are receiving support on the picket lines from passers-by, with many drivers honking their horns in solidarity. One driver rolled down her window as she went by and shouted, “I know they have the money. I support you!”  
 
 
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