ATU CLARAFIES POSITION

Recent reporting on the ATU and TriMet ground rule meeting drives home the need to have the meetings public. One respected media outlet reported talks broke down because the Union insisted on having bloggers present. Another respected media outlet quoted TriMet as saying “negotiations cannot begin because the union insists all negotiated agreements will be void if it wins the appeal.”

Neither of the above statements are accurate. Attached to this email is the last email exchange between the parties over the Union’s last position in the meeting. As you can see, the Union was not insisting on bloggers attending. Nor did it mention anything about “negotiated agreements.”

Bruce Hansen, ATU president reported “This was the Union’s last ground rule proposal and Stedman’s response. We didn’t see the attached email until after we met but what happened is we entered the room and he exploded and ended the meeting solely based on what he wrote in his email. There was no discussion of anything else and as you can see, in an effort to resolve at least one problem, the Union had narrowed its ground rule proposals to just the admitting-the-press issue.”

With TriMet wanting over 400 changes to the contract, it is clear that the parties have many days of talking ahead of them. The Union is not seeking retraction of any of the incorrect statements which it believes were printed in good faith.

See attached:  http://www.atu757.org/RecordCorrectAttachment.pdf