[Update: Mon., June 30, 7pm] Buses will run on schedule on Tuesday after the Teamster Local 186 agreed to extend contract negotiations with Santa Barbara MTD one more day. MTD spokesperson Hillary Blackerby and Jed Johnson of the teamsters individually made the same announcement Monday evening.
For two months, Johnson said, MTD hadn’t moved at all. But on Monday, it moved just enough to justify further mediated negotiations. The three-year contract was set to expire Tuesday at midnight. Had the extension not been granted, 150 MTD employees would have gone out on strike and 15,000 passengers would have had to have found alternative ways to get to where they’re going.
Blackerby declined to discuss contract negotiation specifics, but said MTD was facing “a fiscal cliff” of $4.6 million come 2028. Johnson said that based on the teamsters’ research, MTD had adequate reserves to invest in its workforce.
Blackerby said additional updates will be provided as negotiations proceed.
[Original Story] As of midnight tonight — Monday, June 30 — 15,000 MTD bus riders could suddenly be forced to find other ways to get where they need to go. That scenario will become reality if negotiators for the Metropolitan Transit District and Teamsters Local 186 don’t reach a settlement by the time the clock strikes 12, or if the union leaders don’t grant an extension to contract negotiations. Then MTD drivers will go on strike. That’s roughly 150 members of the MTD workforce. Another 30 are not represented by the union.
MTD spokesperson Hillary Blackerby declined to discuss details of the contract talks that have been taking place since May 6, saying, “I don’t want to negotiate this in the press.”
She did add that MTD is approaching a fiscal cliff in 2028 when the budget will hit a shortfall of $4.6 million. MTD would get there sooner, she said, except for state and federal COVID relief funds that will dry up in 2028.
Everything, according to Blackerby, is more expensive. Gas. Fuel. Wages. Insurance of all kinds. She noted that MTD has gone 16 years without a fare increase. This August — on the 18th — a new fare goes into effect. In terms of onetime cash fares, that’s an increase from $1.75 to $2.50. For seniors, that’s a jump from 85 cents to $1.25. But that only bridges the gap by $1.5 million.
Making matters worse, she said, MTD has just been reclassified as a medium-sized urban bus district; before, it was designated a “small” urban district. That’s because MTD just inched over the 200,000 market-sized population that separates small urban markets from medium-sized ones. The upshot of this is that MTD will now be cut off from incentives and subventions from the Federal Transit Authority that it has customarily relied upon.
Blackerby said discussions could continue up to the midnight hour. But once the clock strikes 12, the contract is over. The last time negotiations at the bargaining table collapsed was in the early ’90s. Back then workers went out on strike for about a day-and-a-half.
Teamsters Local 186 was called for comment but the spokesperson was not available. By deadline, that call had not been returned.
If there is no agreement or negotiation extension, Blackerby will put out the word to MTD passengers that they’ll need to make different arrangements. Of MTD’s typical 15,000 passengers a day, one-third of its riders are UCSB students, City College students, or K-12 students. So for right now, the ridership affected will be less.
