Photo courtesy Capital Metro The Capital Metro board will vote April 23 on the new third-party contractor that will handle 850 employees of StarTran, a subsidiary of Capital Metro.
The transit agency has declined to name the finalists, or how many there are, because of a privacy clause, until the April 20 board work session at 11 a.m.
Capital Metro and StarTran employees, who are members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091, have met numerous times over the past few months to discuss the transition to the new contractor and lay out requirements for what the contractor would provide. However, neither side could agree on core terms for wages, benefits and the pension plan, and Capital Metro chose to pursue a resolution using a third-party arbitrator.
"They didn't want to carry nothing over; we had to fight," said Jay Wyatt, ATU Local 1091's president.
He said this is the first time that the union and Capital Metro have had problems transitioning to a new contractor. Wyatt has been through three transitions since being hired in the 1970s, he said.
In January, both sides agreed that the contractor would have to offer every StarTran employee the same wages and benefits as before the transition. On April 6, both parties agreed to allow the union workers to negotiate a pension plan with the contractor. The contractor would also have to offer existing employees a new position.
"Our hope is the new contractor would be able to offer a defined benefit plan or defined contribution plan," said Linda Watson, president and CEO of Capital Metro.
Defined benefit plans provide a guaranteed payout at a set rate during retirement.
Watson said it is rare that private contractors offer a defined benefit plan because it is so expensive and is hard to predict the cost from year-to-year.
ATU Local 1091 workers currently have both plans, and Wyatt said the union would fight to keep the same pension benefits, which is based on years of service.
About 70 percent of Capital Metro's bus service employees work under StarTran, and the other 30 percent are managed by third-party contractors First Transit and Veolia. StarTran was created in 1991 by Capital to Metro to manage the union workers. Senate Bill 650, signed in June 2011, requires Capital Metro to bring employees in-house or outsource employment to a contractor by Sept. 1.
The bill, which designed to eliminate Capital Metro's use of subsidiary management groups, is a result of the organization's review by the Texas Sunset Advisory Committee. The committee studies government agencies and identifies waste and inefficiencies.
StarTran workers did not support the in-house option because they would have been required to give up their collective bargaining rights to negotiate wages and benefits and the right to strike. Government employees are not allowed to collectively bargain.
Since coming on board in August 2010, Watson has wanted to improve employee relations. She said she wanted the union workers to be involved in the transition process and what goes in the core terms for the new contract. She said Capital Metro did not want the new contractor to be able to offer lower wages because it could be demoralizing to the workers.
"If you have a happy workforce, they provide a high-quality service, and your customers are happy," she said.
Wyatt said that despite Watson's efforts and that some disputes have been resolved with StarTran and subcontractors, morale is still low. He does not see the relationship as being any better and that more could be done, such as resolving scheduling issues.
"The big thing is this transition, the restructure, all that, is really causing employees not to care about Capital Metro very much because they look at them as being mean-spirited for trying to take away everything they fought all these years to have," Wyatt said.
