While bus commuters grapple with losing routes, longer waits, and declining service, Milwaukee County Transit System has been eliminating jobs in ways that increase costs to fare-paying passengers and the county tax levy. Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 998, president Al Simonis sees it as a lose-lose-lose proposition, and totally preventible.
In 1979-1980, MCTS developed facilities for rebuilding the service's main workhorse, the 5300 Flyer. Simonis, who worked many years as an MCTS mechanic, says that the 5300 could generally last for twelve years, then be brought into MCTS's own shop for a complete rebuild: engines, transmission, electrical, air valves, even the seats, at 75% the cost of buying a new bus. The payroll sustained consumer spending in Milwaukee and across southeastern Wisconsin, as far out as Delafield. A new building was constructed for this very purpose in 1987, and a substantial jobs training program developed around it, providing highly marketable skills to central Milwaukee residents. After another twelve years, the rebuilt buses had to be replaced.
For at least ten years, MCTS has not been rebuilding older buses, nor has it been buying new buses, citing budget cuts. The facility for rebuilding, which retired congress representative Jim Moody secured federal money to construct, sits idle. The deteriorating buses are only one long-term financial liability, that has been deferred by County Executive Scott Walker, imposing on future property tax bills the costs of his vaunted insistence of not increasing the tax levy on his own watch.
Current MCTS maintenance supervisor Mike Wehr has sent what repairs cannot be avoided to out-of-state facilities, Simonis observed, with substantial and avoidable shipping costs, while Wehr “really destroyed the workforce,” with the body shop alone dropping from 37 jobs to 10 in the past fifteen years. Budget cuts, says Simonis, are no reason to send away work that does have to be done. Although this kind of outsourcing reduces management responsibility, somehow Wehr and other managers are still being paid at levels more appropriate to someone actually supervising the crews doing the work.
At present, MCTS is catching up on the lost years of deferred maintenance and failing to replace aging buses, by spending economic recovery money on a whole new fleet. For commuters, who have suffered increasing numbers of buses breaking down in the middle of a route, stranding people expected to be at work on time, this will be a welcome development. However, the buses are being built half in Canada and half in Minnesota, having no immediate impact on jobs in Milwaukee.
It would be good stewardship of transit riders' and taxpayers' money to reinstitute the maintenance and rebuilding programs that once gave Milwaukee one of the finest transit systems in the nation. Federal money to replace an entire fleet doesn't come around every year – and ultimately, it is all OUR money. Federal funding comes from income tax just as surely as local funding comes from sales and property tax. We all paid for those buses. MCTS needs to get the most out of this investment, maintain it, like any homeowner has to maintain their home, and put people to work in Milwaukee when it can save 25% on long term operating costs by doing so.
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