Santa Clara County Transit Grinds to a Halt as VTA Workers Strike

More than 1,500 Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority employees walked off the job on Monday, bringing transit in the South Bay to a halt.

Bus drivers, light rail train operators, maintenance workers, dispatchers and other members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 began picketing in the dark, early morning hours outside of five VTA yards and offices. The strike comes after a monthslong contract dispute with the agency.

Though there have been close calls before, Monday’s strike marks the first work stoppage in VTA’s 30-year history.

While spirits among striking workers were high most of the day, a collision between a pickup truck and union members near a bus yard around 9 a.m. put some on edge.

Union officials say the strike is meant to show the agency that workers are serious about their demands for a better contract, after negotiating for more than six months over wages, benefits and other issues, such as how employee grievances are handled in arbitration.

“A lot of people are very appreciative that we’re putting up a fight against the agency that’s mistreated us for decades now,” Raj Singh, the union’s president, said Monday afternoon.

The strike’s first day meant roughly 100,000 transit riders who depended on trains and buses to get around the county had to find alternative transportation. The union authorized a strike in early February and late last week warned it would begin the work stoppage if a deal wasn’t reached.

“It’s affecting a lot of people, it’s affecting the community,” Melissa Rodriguez, a striking bus driver, said Monday while picketing outside the VTA’s Cerone Yard bus depot in North San José.

She said the strike is a big step, one she didn’t anticipate would come to pass, but it’s needed to gain what workers deserve in a high-cost area such as Silicon Valley.

“I feel really bad. But if we don’t do anything about this now, we’re just gonna continue to fight like this back and forth,” she said.

Though some deal points have been settled in negotiations that began in August, the two sides are still far apart on the critical issue of wages, even as the union’s previous contract expired last week.

VTA negotiators offered their last offer to the union on Feb. 28, which included a 9% raise spread over three years, with 4% offered in the first year, then 3% and 2%, respectively, in the latter years.

On the same day, the union requested an 18% raise over the same three-year period, with 6% raises each year.

“VTA has made multiple modifications in the proposal it’s made in the last couple of weeks, while ATU appears to refuse to make any changes whatsoever to its demand,” Stacey Hendler Ross, a VTA spokesperson, said Monday. “There’s no way that VTA can meet the specific wage increase demands that the union is asking for without having to cut service or cut jobs, and that’s just not a tenable option.”

Singh said the agency must improve its offer by increasing wages and granting the union more favorable arbitration terms in worker disputes with VTA.

“We’re waiting on the agency to call us to start these discussions again. We want to get this done sooner rather than later,” Singh said.

The tensions increased when a low-speed collision occurred outside the Cerone Yard. Singh said a pickup truck leaving the yard was driven by a VTA supervisor who became impatient with picketers in the crosswalk. The driver accelerated as he turned onto the street, and union members who were in the road made contact with the car.

A partial video of the incident, shared with KQED by union members, shows two people in bright vests falling after colliding with the truck in traffic lanes, with several others close by.

Hendler Ross said she couldn’t confirm whether the driver was a VTA employee, and said the San José Police Department is investigating the collision.

Singh said two people were taken to the hospital — one for injuries to their foot and the other due to swelling on their neck.

“People are already infuriated by the fact that the agency’s been mistreating them,” Singh said. “That’s only going to escalate things and make things worse.”

Hendler Ross said the agency is concerned about picketers blocking the entrances of VTA work locations to other employees and being in traffic lanes.

“We respect the union’s right to strike and to protest and to picket, but we would hope that they would do it in a safe manner and not be unlawfully blocking people from coming to work, unlawfully blocking traffic,” she said.

Outside VTA headquarters on North First Street, picketers chanted slogans just across the street from the empty River Oaks light rail stop while passing cars blared their horns.

Corena Medina, a striking VTA customer service agent, said striking workers have empathy for the riders they serve daily.

“Before we can be of service to anyone else, we must be able to take care of ourselves and be well,” she said.

Negotiators for the agency and the union met Sunday to try and avert the strike, but the meeting was brief and nothing meaningful was settled, according to the agency and the union.

Medina said workers want a solution but are resolved to strike as long as they need to.

“The biggest hope we have right now is that we can come back to the table with VTA,” she said. “We can try to figure out how we can come to some type of an agreement so that we can get back out there and keep this county rolling.”