EDITORIAL
Drivers prove again: Strikes rarely pay off

O'ahu's month-long bus strike seriously inconvenienced many, benefited few and angered virtually everyone. It was a strike that never should have been.

The biggest losers in the strike, of course, were the riders — especially the many who couldn't afford alternatives. Thousands of people were unable to get to work, to school, to medical appointments.

Even without the strike, riders are looking at a triple whammy to the pocketbook. They absorbed a major fare hike July 1. Then on Wednesday the City Council voted another fare increase. And council members already are talking about the possible need for a third fare hike.

A week of free ridership, announced yesterday, is needed, not only to prevent a steep drop-off in ridership as the result of higher fares, but to assuage the anger of many riders.

Next biggest losers were the bus drivers, who lost more money in lost wages while they were out on strike than they will make up from the new contract for a long, long time. It's clear that they could have had a three-year contract with no raises, but no layoffs or takebacks, without a strike. That's what they got in the first three years of their new five-year pact.

More important than their economic losses, however, was a massive alienation of the bus-riding public. The drivers' effort to explain their cause was a dismal failure. Most people blame the strike and its inconveniences on the drivers.

The strike may ultimately prove worthwhile if it sets residents to thinking more seriously about real mass-transit alternatives. Honolulu was so much quieter during the strike, and its air so much cleaner, that talk of some sort of clean, efficient train service is likely to resurface. We've long argued that Honolulu won't ever be a major, modern city until it takes that step.

If anyone emerged a winner from the bus strike, it would be Mayor Jeremy Harris. He vowed that the drivers would never get a pay raise while he remained in City Hall, and it appears he's made that stick, although pay raises in the fourth and fifth years of the drivers' new contract will be among the challenges that Harris' successor will inherit.

The City Council, once the smoke clears, should re-examine its arbitrary requirement that the farebox support at least 27 percent of bus operations, which, after all, caused this strike.

We urge the drivers to ratify the new contract. The public demands it.