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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, September 26, 2003

Money saved in strike not for raises

 •  Week of free bus service offered to coax riders
 •  Bus strike left everyone winning some, losing some
 •  Relieved bus riders resigned to higher fares

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

The month-long strike by city bus workers helped save the city nearly $3 million, but the money won't go to pay for raises, city officials said yesterday.

Instead, the saved money probably will be balanced out in the next year by a decline in bus ridership and a subsequent drop in revenue.

"That $3 million shouldn't be spent. It should be placed on hold to give us a cushion to minimize the loss of ridership," said Cheryl Soon, city director of transportation services.

During the strike, the city was saving about $180,000 to $200,000 a day by not paying bus workers salaries, fuel and other maintenance costs on the buses, according to a city spokesperson. Over the course of the strike, that came to nearly $6 million.

However, the city spent about $550,000 during the same time period to provide alternative transportation. Those costs included leasing more than 100 school buses and vans and hiring drivers for some of them, Soon said.

The city also lost several million in revenue because of bus fares that were not collected and will have to reimburse thousands of riders for prepaid bus passes they were unable to use.

Providing free bus service for five days when the strike resumes will cost another $600,000, said Mayor Jeremy Harris. The city also plans a series of radio and television adds to encourage bus riders to return once full service is restored.

Ultimately, however, officials may never be able to determine how much the economy was hurt by the strike, several economists and labor experts said yesterday.

"It's almost impossible to put a specific number to something like that," said economist Leroy Laney, a Hawai'i Pacific University professor.

Still, officials said the strike almost certainly had a detrimental effect on at least some parts of the economy, including low-income and elderly residents and businesses that rely on their patronage, others said.

"Whenever there's a labor dispute, it disrupts the economy. That's part of the intent of a strike, to send a clear message that intervention is necessary if you don't want to suffer," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. "When you have a 30-day strike, the economic impact is formidable."

A nine-day public transit strike in Los Angeles in 1994 cost the community $18 million in wages, sales and efficiency, according to one of the few studies done nationwide on bus strikes.

Officials at the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, said this week they looked at economic indicators during the strike but were unable to come to any conclusions about its impact. It's impossible to separate the effects of the strike from other economic factors happening at the same time, they said.

Even so, some of the effects likely will become clear in coming weeks and months, said Lawrence Boyd, a labor economist for the University of Hawai'i's Center for Labor Education and Research.

"First, there's a handy little gauge called the unemployment statistics," Boyd said. "When they come out in the next month, you're likely going to see an uptick that reflects the workers on strike," he said.

If the increase is even greater, that might mean that some other people lost their jobs because they had no way to get to work, he said.

The strike likely hit some groups harder than others.

"We know that bus riders are more likely to be older, younger and poorer, and there are stories about the dislocations caused by the strike, but that's something that's a little more difficult to put a number to," Boyd said.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.