After final-hour talks between union officials and government labor negotiators proved fruitless, St. John Vitran workers resigned themselves to layoffs as of Thursday morning.
"It's been great working for Vitran. It's time to move on," driver Paula Smith said. She and nine other St. John public transit workes spent much of Wednesday hoping for a last-minute reprieve. But by mid-afernoon, conversations turned to job opportunities at local hotels.
Operations manager Donna Roberts, the one St. Vitran worker who is still to report for work Thursday, spent most of the day adjusting a new bus schedule and laying down the ground rules for five St. Thomas transferees given their marching orders earlier in the day.
Because public transit service was begun only three years ago on St. John, the island's Vitran employees, being among the last-hired, were among the first to be let go. When officials of the United Steelworkers Union, which represents the St. Thomas and St. John Vitran rank and file, met with the employees on April 20, the St. Thomas workers said they would not come to St. John to replace their union brothers and sisters.
But by Wednesday morning, Roberts said, the five St. Thomas workers now at the bottom of the union's seniority list were given an ultimatum: Report to St. John or face termination.
Steelworkers union president Luis "Tito" Morales has warned his members that anyone terminated as a result of a job action will not be subject to recall if and when the public transit system recovers from its current financial plight.
Hopes for a last-minute reprieve were pinned in part on a meeting Wednesday between Morales and Government House chief labor negotiator Karen Andrews. The union president arranged the talks via a Tuesday evening telephone call to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull.
But by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Morales could only report what Andrews had said publicly at a Monday night Senate committee hearing on St. Thomas: Any pitch for union concessions in exchange for saving jobs would have to be analyzed by administration financial officers before a decision could be made about the future of the affected public transit employees.
Union workers have said they would forgo sick-leave, holiday and overtime pay and would go to a four-day work week in order to avoid the announced layoff of 62 employees — half the Vitran work force.
When the layoffs were announced last month, it was stated that any St. Thomas drivers interested in transferring to St. John would have to take up residence on St. John. It appeared that this would no longer be the case.
Morales said he would ask the administration to compensate St. Thomas workers for any expenses they would incur for staying overnight on St. John to start the day's first run at 5:15 a.m. When Vitran began operations on St. John in 1997, he said, temporary drivers from St. Thomas and St. Croix were paid for overnight stays. Roberts, however, said she does not favor such concessions now, since St. John drivers were not similarly compensated.
The new crew will be subject to the same shift rotation that has been in effect, Roberts said. Details of the new schedule are still being worked out, she said, but there will be limited service on Sundays. Starting immediately Thursday, the last regular departure from the Cruz Bay ferry dock will be at 7:25 p.m. instead of 9:25 p.m. And the last run from Salt Pond to Susannaberg will depart at 8:15 p.m. instead of 10:15 p.m.
Among those sure to be affected by the earlier end to service from the ferry dock are University of the Virgin Islands evening students commuting from the St. Thomas campus on the island's west end, and St. John commuters whose work shifts require them to come home on a ferry later than 7 p.m.
