MeVa buses are still parked and strikers are still walking the picket line in front of the regional transit authority’s Haverhill headquarters after a compromise was floated and voted down.
As the strike dragged past the one-week mark, both MeVa Administrator Noah S. Berger and the union lead negotiator Jim Mark told WHAV both sides are talking, both formally and informally, but have not found a way to get the drivers back behind the wheels.
“We’re trying,” Mark said.
MeVa’s 140 drivers and mechanics, represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, struck at midnight on Wednesday, July 1, when their contract expired. The main sticking point is Saturday work. Currently, drivers have the option of accepting Saturday shifts and, those who have already worked 40 hours, receive overtime pay. The quasi-public authority seeks to require Saturday work as part of a wage hike.
Mark said his drivers oppose required Saturday work and the wage hike doesn’t make up for overtime pay drivers lose. He said he asked his drivers if they would accept a one-year contract extension with a modest wage increase to give the union time to sort out the Saturday work issue with the company, but that idea was voted down.
Berger told WHAV his quasi-governmental agency offered to set aside a portion of the Saturday shifts for drivers who wanted the option to work and to offer a four-day work week to 15 drivers.
But Mark said that idea was also shot down.
“We want what we have always had,” Mark told WHAV. “It’s as simple as that.”
“Mini-MeVa” on-demand bus service has also been curtailed, though some shifts are being covered by contract drivers. The service typically employs lift-equipped vehicles to take residents to medical appointments.
Drivers currently make $29.51 per hour. The agency offered a 25% wage hike, or an added $4.49 per hour across the board increase for all drivers in the first year of a new three-year contract, according to Berger. In year two, wages would rise to $36 per hour and to $37 in year three. The proposed contract also includes 100% coverage of health insurance premiums for employees and their families as well as an additional $3 per hour for Saturday shifts.
Berger has said MeVa is seeking the change in its Saturday work assignment policy because the current system is not “sustainable.” He said the biggest request from riders is more Saturday and Sunday service but that the company cannot add more service because it is already scrambling to fill the current shifts. He also noted not all the drivers would have to work every Saturday.
MeVa, which provides free, fixed route bus service to 16 Merrimack Valley communities from Salisbury and Newburyport to Haverhill, Methuen and Lawrence, has seen a 60.8% increase in ridership since 2019, one of the few regional transit authorities nationwide which exceeds its pre-COVID-19 service levels.