[Mpls] The Metro Transit Strike IS a Minneapolis Issue

[Paul Rohlfing]

Why is the metro transit drivers’ strike a Minneapolis issue?

Don’t let any of the Met Council rhetoric fool you – this strike is all 
about safety for Minneapolis residents, drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and 
transit riders.

Our Metro Transit buses are the largest vehicles on the road on most 
Minneapolis streets and the skill and commitment of the people behind the 
wheels of those buses is of critical importance to us here in the city.

I am a union organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 
Local 284 – Minnesota’s largest school bus drivers union – and I can tell 
you what we have found over the years about safety and reliability in 
student transportation. When you have drivers with good pay, affordable 
health benefits and good retirement benefits, you turn driving into a career 
– not just a job. When drivers are given lower pay, benefits that aren’t 
affordable and no retirement to look forward to (as is the case at many of 
the private school bus companies like Laidlaw and First Student) safety and 
reliability suffer. For an example, just look at last month’s hit-and-run 
incident involving a Rehbein operated bus and an elementary school student 
in Vadnais Heights.

This strike represents a watershed moment for the people who operate those 
buses we coexist with on our Minneapolis streets every day. Will drivers 
continue to be career professionals with a personal stake in being safe or 
will we lower standards and put safety and reliability second? Ask my little 
brother, a year-round bike commuter who puts his life in the hands of Metro 
Transit drivers every day, what he thinks.

The Met Council has done a masterful job of spinning in this contract 
dispute – but make no mistake about their hypocrisy. Managers at Metro 
Transit just received a hefty raise from the Met Council.

I don’t see much moral gray area here. The Met Council is trying to price 
drivers out of being able to afford family health insurance and is trying to 
go back on their commitment to provide retiree health insurance – all to 
protect a few cents worth of the tax cuts some of us have received. The 
results of a Met Council win here would be disastrous for these drivers and 
their families and detrimental to the quality of life on our city streets. 
If we as a community can’t pull together and, with one voice, denounce what 
the Met Council is trying to do here we will send a pretty clear message of 
our own:

Go ahead – give us more Wal-Mart jobs and a less dependable and less safe 
public service.

Paul C. Rohlfing
Powderhorn
(Ward 9, Precinct 7 had 90 folks at the DFL caucus last night!)

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