UTA forced union on workers, suit says

Light-rail employees at the Utah Transit Authority have been forced into a union that does not adequately meet the needs unique to the public transit company's TRAX operation, an attorney for two TRAX workers said Monday.

The two employees, Lisa Burke and Michael Carper, sued UTA and Local 382 of the Amalgamated Transit Union in October. On Monday, attorney Edward Wells argued that the TRAX workers' collective bargaining rights were signed over to Local 382, which has long represented UTA's bus employees, without the TRAX workers' consent.

"The TRAX employees have never had the opportunity to vote on what's the appropriate bargaining unit," Wells said. "You've got employees that are being forced into the Local 382 without ever having a chance to vote."

The two plaintiffs maintain their needs are not represented by the Local 382, and that TRAX employees are outvoted on every major issue that comes before the union. UTA's TRAX division has about 150 employees to the bus division's 700 workers.

But many of the current TRAX employees did have a chance to vote on Local 382's representation, UTA attorney Scott Hagen said. The majority of TRAX workers are former bus employees who participated in the 1998 negotiations that allowed UTA's bus employees the first opportunity at light-rail jobs.

Hagen said Burke and Carper were part of that original group that voted to extend Local 382 to the newly created TRAX division. TRAX began operations on Dec. 4, 1999.

Burke and Carper have asked U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell to issue a preliminary injunction preventing UTA from transferring bus workers over to the TRAX side while the lawsuit is pending. Cassell did not rule on the motion Monday but said he would do so within the next few days.

The problem, according to Wells, is that every Local 382 member was allowed to cast a vote, even those bus employees who had no intention of switching over to the TRAX division. A new election, participated in only by TRAX employees, is necessary to determine if Local 382 should continue holding the workers' collective bargaining rights, or if the light-rail employees are entitled to their own union representation, Wells said.

Local 382 attorney Joseph Hatch said such a split would be unheard of, as public-transit companies have historically had one union representing all of their workers.

"What they're asking for is a severance on this, and that would be unprecedented in this industry," he said.

Hatch said his clients feel as if they are suffering from the old adage "no good deed goes unpunished" in light of the time and energy union leaders put into ensuring the TRAX jobs would go to current UTA employees.

"My clients aggressively negotiated with the employer the right that their members would have the first crack at these jobs," he said.

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