Port Authority enlists fact finder

With a potential strike looming, Port Authority officials have hired a third party to help… With a potential strike looming, Port Authority officials have hired a third party to help arbitrate negotiations.

In hopes of silencing threats of a Port Authority of Allegheny County strike, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations board appointed a fact finder.

The fact finder will aid in the formal labor negotiations between the Port Authority and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85, the labor union that represents many Port Authority drivers.

Jane Rigler, the appointed fact finder, is responsible for oversight and analysis of the collective bargaining stalemate over the budget proposals for the 2009 fiscal year.

As the fact finder – a non-binding arbitrator – Rigler, a retired professor from Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law, will have 45 days with which to suggest a resolution to the parties in question.

Port Authority and ATU Local 85 will then have 15 days to assess and approve the recommendations altogether. A failure to reach unanimous agreement would render the recommendations null and void.

Previous fact-finding expeditions in 1991-92 and 2005 have not produced consensus of opinion nor binding contracts – with the first attempt in 1991-92 leading to a strike.

Patrick McMahon, president-business agent for Local 85, has previously said that he views the fact-finding process a “waste of time.”

“The best [outcome] to expect is to get somewhere where we [ATA Local 85 and Port Authority] can negotiate,” he said.

If those negotiations, too, are fruitless, the infighting between Port Authority and Local 85 might lead to labor stoppage.

The last instance of a public transit labor stoppage was 1992. Service was withheld for 28 days before an Allegheny County judge ordered the strike to end.