Jesse Jackson offers help in ending transit strike

LOS ANGELES - Negotiations resumed Friday in a nearly month-old transit strike after the Rev. Jesse Jackson offered to help Los Angeles County transit officials and the union reach a contract agreement.

''We're going to stay the course. We're going to do what's right, and if they don't like it, we've got good friends,'' drivers union leader James Williams said at a Friday rally.

Miguel Contreras, who heads the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, invited Jackson to participate in the talks.

''Count on me as your friend as we seek to move beyond this crisis,'' Jackson told the City Council earlier, to cheers from about 300 uniformed bus drivers.

The union representing 4,300 bus and rail operators has been on strike since Sept. 16, forcing 450,000 commuters, most of them poor, to search for alternate transportation.

Negotiators for the United Transportation Union and Metropolitan Transportation Authority were scheduled to meet late Friday night. Disagreements remain over work rules, including overtime pay, said Neal Sacharow, a spokesman for the labor federation.

It was unclear whether Jackson would sit in on negotiations or be available to mediate outside the contract talks. State mediators had earlier failed to obtain a consensus.

Jackson said fear had driven a wedge between the MTA and its drivers. The drivers are afraid of losing work rules they've fought hard for, while the county is worried about ''busting the budget,'' Jackson said.

''But in the end, fear must lose,'' he added.

The MTA and the union have accused each other of deliberately prolonging the strike. Jackson later went to Pasadena, where both sides have been holding contract talks.

''He's talking with the parties,'' said Goldy Norton, a union spokesman. ''We welcome it. We're certainly hopeful. There are high-level meetings going on as we speak.''

The City Council unanimously passed an emergency motion urging Mayor Richard Riordan ''to immediately take the necessary steps to end the MTA strike and restore our collapsed transportation system.''

Riordan, who has been involved in the negotiations, controls a majority voting bloc on the MTA board of directors through himself and his three appointees.

The MTA earlier this week released what it called its ''last, best and final offer.''

However, drivers in the packed City Council chamber jeered when MTA Chief Operating Officer Allan Lipsky urged them to seriously consider the package.

''We are not out to bust this union,'' he said. ''We can settle this strike if you'll give it fair consideration.''

The offer of a retroactive, three-year contract that would run until 2003 included a 9.3 percent pay increase and a 1 percent increase in MTA contributions to its employee pension fund.

Drivers' salaries average $50,000 a year, and some make up to $85,000 a year with overtime, according to the MTA. The drivers oppose changes including proposals that would allow the MTA to expand its use of part-time drivers and the number of bus runs in which drivers are not paid overtime for 10-hour shifts.

The MTA, seeking to shave $23 million from operating costs, contends current work rules are outmoded.