MELTDOWN AT MASCOT

MAT-SU — Under a cloud of controversy, nine employees of Matanuska-Susitna Community Transit found themselves out of work Sept. 11 after a brutal round of layoffs, cuts that will ultimately affect the Valley’s most vulnerable population.

The transit group called MASCOT provides bus service as far north as Houston, connects Palmer and Wasilla and makes daily trips to Anchorage. The non-profit group is reliant on donations and matching grant funding.

The 50 percent reduction in workforce came after the board of directors passed a budget requiring $400,000 in cuts from operating expenses, said MASCOT Executive Director Lou Friend.

“We are a grant-based organization. We have a shortfall because of cutbacks in grant funding,” Friend said. “Those funds just aren’t coming in.”

Steven Phillips came to work last Friday as the most experienced driver on the staff. He loved his job helping people, despite the low pay and limited benefits.

“I’d been working there for 10 years, yet my pay was only $15.25 an hour. Health insurance was costing a third of your paycheck every month for just the driver. If you added your family, it took half of it,” Phillips said. “We basically had our jobs on a day-to-day basis.”

At about 11 a.m., with a bus full of passengers, Phillips received a call to head to Wal-Mart where he was to unload his passengers and return to MASCOT headquarters. Once there, he was told he was told to clear out his belongings.

“We didn’t have any clue were going to be laid off,” Phillips said. “If they were going to lay people off, I should be the very last person.”

For Billie Dodd, another driver out of a job, there is a simple answer to why the layoffs happened so fast and who they happened to.

DIS-UNION

In August, Dodd contacted a representative from the Teamsters labor union about the possibility of organizing the drivers. As Phillips’ example shows, the drivers had no rights and the pay was well below comparable positions around the state, Dodd said.

After two meetings with the union, Dodd passed out the blue cards for the employees to sign if they wanted to join the Teamsters.

“They said from the date we signed the cards, our jobs would be federally protected,” Dodd said.

She collected the cards and presented them to the board of directors at its monthly meeting in August. The directors agreed to recognize the union and that bargaining would be done through the Teamsters, Dodd said.

It was at the next board meeting that the cuts came down.

“Everyone but one person who was laid off had a Teamsters card,” Dodd said. “Yes, I do think the unionizing was the direct reason.”

With a fleet that was expanded earlier this year, there are now more than two buses per driver at the MASCOT lot, Dodd said. The extra buses will either sit idle or be staffed by temporary drivers paid less than $10 per hour, she said. Of course, she said, any temporary drivers will likely not be union.

Petrina Peak, a laid-off driver who lost her housing arrangement because she had no more steady income, said she was asked to sign a letter recognizing she was being permanently laid off.

“Even if they did start hiring again, we could not get our jobs back,” Peak said. “I’ve got a double-whammy. Now, I’m homeless.”

Another laid-off driver who signed the blue card, Aaron Bremner said the budget cuts were probably coming down either way. But perhaps, he said, the cuts were used as an easy excuse to cut the union workers.

But what’s even more worrying, Bremner said, is the drivers remaining at MASCOT are the most inexperienced.

“When I looked at the people still left, all were the lowest paid drivers except for two. One of those is nearing retirement, and the other is just so they can say they have one experienced driver,” Bremner said. This is not good, he said, as winter driving conditions are coming up soon and special care has to be taken getting people with special needs on and off the bus.

UNFORTUNATE TIMING

In response, Friend said it is a false conclusion to think the employees were fired because of their efforts to unionize. Friend said the board of directors recognized their right to a union at the August meeting.

“The board has said if they want to unionize, that’s their right as citizens of the United States,” Friend said. “The were fired because of money.”

As to why there was no warning of the impending layoffs, Friend said there was simply no time to delay. The board passed the budget at the September meeting, and immediate action had to be taken, he said.

“There just wasn’t time to give notice,” Friend said.

Friend declined to say how the determination was made about who to fire, but he does not agree that only the inexperienced drivers are left. Furthermore, Friend denies ever seeing the union cards, so he would not know who to fire even if he did want to rid MASCOT of the union.

“To my knowledge, these cards were never presented,” Friend said. “How could I base a decision on information I don’t have?”

The problem is much simpler than some kind of battle between labor and management, he said. Federal grants are easier to come by, but typically limited to capital expenditures, Friend said. Hence, the new buses earlier this summer and the 11 replacement vehicles coming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Operating expenses, on the other hand, are much more difficult to pursue.

“Federal grants say, ‘We will help you get established. You have to rely on local governments to keep you going,’” Friend said. “We are always asking the local and state governments for help. We are constantly working with the (Matanuska-Susitna) Borough. It has been an active process, but the bottom line is if they are not in a position to help, they can’t help.”

Without the help needed, Friend said their services are being cut at a time when ridership continues to grow.

“We just simply couldn’t keep going,” Friend said. “It’s tragic. They depend on us to get to the store, doctor’s offices, work, court and Alaska Job Corps. For a lot of people, we are their lifeline to the outside world.”

Part 2

See Sunday’s edition of the Frontiersman for a more in-depth look at how the cuts will affect the larger community.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.