Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 2, 1991 TAG: 9103020270
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES/ BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Today, a year after the walkout began, union greivances are mired in National Labor Relations Board hearing, the Dallas-based bus company has filed for reorganization under the federal bankruptcy code. And in Roanoke, where the strike has generated occasional evidence of bitterness, Wadey's car is enduring paint bombings.
Lightbulbs filled with red paint have hit Wadey's white, subcompact in Southeast Roanoke three times in the past 10 days, police said. And the former union driver suspects his former co-workers.
"The whole system operates on fear, and I refuse to cave in to that. I don't believe in shooting at buses," he said Friday, referring to the spate of sniper attacks last year against passenger-filled buses piloted by replacement drivers.
Earl Boitnott, a union steward with Local 1493 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, dismisses Wadey's charges. "That person wants to blame everything on the union because he's bitter against it. I don't think [the paint attacks] had anything to do with the drivers."
For Wadey, the apparent attempts at intimidation are not new. Last June, Roanoke Circuit Judge Roy Willett ruled that two Greyhound picketers had initimidated Wadey with death threats the month before.
The allegations stemmed from a May 10 encounter in which Wadey said three strikers followed him to a parking lot near the Salem Avenue terminal and peppered him with obscenities and death threats as he tried to walk home late at night.
"What they're doing is wrong. I had the the job before the strike started," he said, adding that Virginia law grants him the right to drive a Greyhound bus without belonging to a union.
Boitnott takes a different view. The gunshots, the intimidation - all were the work of "some people taking advantage of the situation," he said. After 14 years driving for the nation's only inter-city bus line - and one year striking the company - the Roanoke County man remains committed to the walkout.
"The majority are still fighting. We've got a picket down there [at Campbell Court in downtown Roanoke] at least three days a week. We're going to always be there. We're not going to go away."
Boitnott said many Roanoke-area union drivers have found new jobs. Others devoted their newly found free time to other businesses, such as the small landscaping company Boitnott started nine years ago. A few chose retirement.
Sixty union drivers were based in Roanoke when the national union's 9,000 members walked out last March 2. The union stopped $50-a-week strike benefits last September, saying remaining dollars were needed for legal fees.
But the collective conviction that the company is set on "busting the union" remains, Boitnott insists. "There's not a driver in Roanoke who will walk across the picket line and drive for" Fred Currey, Greyhound's owner and chief executive officer.
Now reorganizing in bankruptcy, Greyhound has cuts its driving corps from 6,000 to 3,500. There are 600 fewer mechanics, 250 fewer managers and 1,000 fewer buses. But the carrier still stops at 95 percent of the cities, towns and other out-of-the-way places it served before drivers walked off in a wage and benefit dispute.
by CNB