NEGOTIATIONS

 THE UNION SIDE
Once again, Neil McFarlane' description of negotiations last Friday and yesterday was "fiction" as usual. TriMet's position is the same as it has been: “take-away after take-away." One thing he didn't write about is what time talks ended last Friday. Since TriMet management doesn't work past five o'clock, that is when they ended talks. Goes to show how important employees are to TriMet, doesn't it?
 It’s clear that TriMet is not getting it. I encourage all of you to show up at the next Board of Directors’ meeting February 23^rd, and please keep an eye on upcoming Tracking Fasters, our website, and follow us on Facebook as we will be looking for opportunities to visit the homes of TriMet management, and the Board of Directors. As we’ve stated before, we will use every legal method available to us in order to put pressure on TriMet’s illegal implementation of health insurance and send a strong message that without a good working relationship and somebody that understands labor management this system will not run smoothly.

MCFARLANES SIDE: 
I wanted to let you know our attempt to mediate our contract dispute with the ATU failed. We will share with you more details of our offers to settle soon. I believe our offers were fair and showed great flexibility in addressing specific issues. Last Friday, we began negotiations asking about a short term ‘bridge’ agreement – just to the end of this calendar year – together with a defined schedule for negotiation/mediation/arbitration of a follow-on agreement. The ATU offered back a two year agreement – but that required us to deal with some tough issues on retirement health care. Ultimately, that ‘track’ was dropped to work on an agreement just through this year’s end. We exchanged a number of proposals, but in the end could not reach an agreement. In the context of our short-term bridge agreement, our financial 'compass' was to seek an agreement that simply avoided service cuts and layoffs in the next fiscal year. Frankly, our best offer Wednesday did not even meet that standard and would have required us to push off essential capital and make deeper management cuts to keep our service at current levels. We have indicated to the state conciliator our willingness to continue conversations with the ATU. I am disappointed, but will continue to work hard to achieve a fair agreement. Neil