PBOT workers are on strike. Host Jonathan Maus visited the picket line outside PBOT's Maintenance Operations headquarters on the first day of the walkout and talked to a few workers — the same folks who sweep our bike lanes, patch the roads, replace signs, and so on. In this episode you'll hear those interviews, learn a bit about why the strike is happening, and hear what PBOT says the impacts will be.

Links from the episode:

• City of Portland Strike Impacts Page
• BikePortland Strike Coverage

Jonathan Maus 0:02

Unknown Speaker 2:52

We do paving we do the street maintenance, fix potholes, patch roads and tear up old roads put in new pavement? Yeah,

Jonathan Maus 3:00

Can Can you say anything sort of like from your personal experience, like what brought you out to the picket line,

Unknown Speaker 3:06

we haven't had good raises in quite a while. And every time it comes up for bargaining, the city's basically like, we'll catch you next time. Things are tough, you know, work with us, we'll catch you next time. And then next time doesn't seem to come and we're digging in this time. You know, it's like, it's time for a change. There's been a lot of increases, you know, in everything, everything is costing more, and the city's not keeping up. They're not even wanting to you know, keep up with inflation. So that's why we're out here.

Jonathan Maus 3:31

We cover bicycling specifically, for the most part. Any idea in your part from your perspective? Like how, how long it would take striking before you know bicycle riders sort of see your people use the street see and impact.

Unknown Speaker 3:45

I don't think I'd take too long. I mean, there's a lot of work gets done here. Behind the scenes, people don't notice the work getting done, but they're gonna notice when it doesn't get done. Yeah.

Jonathan Maus 3:53

Is there something specific that happens from from these workers here in terms of biking is this? Are these the same workers that are running the sweepers and stuff like that?

Unknown Speaker 4:01

Oh, yeah, like pothole crews, for example. There's not many potholes getting fixed today. And we're out here we have crews that are out here fixing potholes all the time, which is a danger to cyclists for sure. And then, you know, signs and bump out signs and things get busted off, run over, and city workers are on that pretty quick to fix that stuff. And right now, there's not many people out there doing anything.

Jonathan Maus 4:23

If you had a message for Pbot management, what would it be,

Unknown Speaker 4:26

keep up with inflation and at least, at least we can keep our wages adequate with inflation, instead of we're going backwards. And they're just not, they're not helping us out, you know, keep up with a lot of the policies that they've put in place that have costs, raise up the cost of living around here, you know, again, there's a lot of people here that work here, they can't even afford a house and we're, we're forced to live in sky high rent prices and all that and, and a lot of those things are to do with politics that have been made. And we're just stuck with the results and we're kind of eating crow out here. You know, every time we go to The grocery store every time we pay rent Chuck,

Jonathan Maus 5:02

I'm sure you know that that Pbot can make a really good case that their budget is in a lot of trouble for various reasons. Actually, this week, I heard the chief administrative officer who basically the person who runs the office of management and finance, he basically said, he bought a funding model. And the way things are going is that the agency is going out of business. And this This was a work session. This has nothing to do with a strike or anything, but you know it for years, people have been losing money revenues going down for all sorts of other different reasons. So how, how do you respond to that,

Unknown Speaker 5:31

every Monday on another list of white collar jobs that are well over $100,000 Come out, brand new positions made up titles that you've never even heard of, and they have no problem coming up with jobs that pay 120 $150,000 a year, but to the people out here on the streets are actually doing the work that are fixing the signs that are fixing the roads that are putting in sidewalks, they just want some money that keeps up with inflation. But yeah, they act like they're broke, they lay over and they just say we're broke and times are tough. You know, it doesn't seem like it, the city seems to always have plenty of money. Anytime they want to fill up pet project, some kind of, you know, goofy new idea or something. There's always money for that. There's always money for new trucks and new equipment, but you have to pay the workers out here that are actually doing the work a fair wage, all of a sudden, now they're broke, doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense at all.

Jonathan Maus 6:23

Appreciate it. Thanks. Take care. You might have asked us a few questions.

Unknown Speaker 6:28

It all depends on what I'll just general stuff kind

Jonathan Maus 6:31

of like what you do. Okay. And that kind of thing. Yeah. So like, what what, what job do you do at the Bureau now,

Unknown Speaker 6:35

Night Shift street cleaning?

Jonathan Maus 6:39

We cover we cover a lot of like bike related issues. Can you say something about how the workers here that are striking that that would be felt by people that are riding around the streets?

Unknown Speaker 6:47

Well, on nice shift tree cleaning, we clean a lot of the bike paths and whatnot. That's part of our job. Basically, that would affect you guys directly.

Jonathan Maus 6:59

How many how many days a striking you think before people would start to notice an impact?

Unknown Speaker 7:04

Immediately. I mean, there's broken bottles and glass every night downtown and whatnot, we spent a lot of time downtown. And it's every night, it's like we started all over again.

Jonathan Maus 7:17

How much confidence you have in like the mayor, the city's plan to like just plug in replacements and have them do it. I think that's a feasible way to make the work happen.

Unknown Speaker 7:26

No, I don't. I don't, there's we, we deal with a lot of stuff. There's a lot of safety issues involved, there's a traffic issues involved. There's a lot of experience that's, you know, developed over the years to doing this job. You know, we deal with homeless people we deal with transients, we deal with garbage that are thrown your garbage cans thrown all into it, stuff like that, we have to clean up stuff. There's there's a lot of people that want to do that kind of work

Jonathan Maus 7:55

might be a bit shocking for just like a private contractor replacement has never done that to be dropped into that kind of scene. You know, there's a lot of

Unknown Speaker 8:01

biohazards and stuff out there too, that we have to deal with and whatnot.

Jonathan Maus 8:06

Like, what about the whole budget thing? I mean, I don't know if you keep up with like the Pbot budget specifics, but you know, probably for years, you've probably been hearing that they're they're running on, you know, getting worse and worse revenues declining for all kinds of different reasons, not just employee salaries and stuff. And they, they can make a pretty strong case that they're really facing some tough headwinds in terms of just revenue in general and budget, how does that land on you in relation to the strike and in relation to your own salary?

Unknown Speaker 8:34

Well, in relation to my own salary, when I compare it to what they get in the offices and whatnot, you know, there's no comparison at all. They always scream that we're out of money when it's time for new contracts and stuff like that. But yet in the office, they always managed to get theirs. I just like to see little fairness across the board.

Jonathan Maus 8:54

If you could share some with you about management, what would it be?

Unknown Speaker 8:57

Well, we'd like to make a fair wage. We put up with a lot of safety issues and a lot of dangers out there. Now, the whole everything's changed since way back when, and that needs to be reflected in our salaries and whatnot.

Jonathan Maus 9:10

Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 9:13

reason we're out here is for just fair wages. You know, the economy has gotten so out of control that, you know, we can't even live in our own city. You know, we can't fix our roads. We can't fix our sewers. You know, can't fix the potholes.

Jonathan Maus 9:36

What kind of work to do it Pbot

Unknown Speaker 9:38

I am a heavy equipment operator.

Jonathan Maus 9:42

So from the perspective of people that use the streets, maybe from a bicycle, which you know, are even more vulnerable to potholes and messes and stuff like that. What kind of impacts like how soon do you think those impacts might be filled for folks like that?

Unknown Speaker 9:56

I'm not sure. Right now we're just waiting on our Our labor team and downtown to come up with a reasonable fair on both ends. agreement.

And when you hear people at management talk about, hey, we're really facing some tough times in terms of budgets and stuff. How does that land when you hear that?

I'll tell you what I read. City of Portland got 20,000,400 and 22nd. And that means bike lanes, bump outs, islands, and when are they gonna get done? So we're just, we're just waiting patiently. We've had, we're having fun out here, we had a barbecue.

Yeah, anything else you tell Pbot management if they if you could,

I just hope they can come up with a reasonable and fair wage for us. I've been here 22 years. And I'm not even making what they're making out there.

I appreciate your time. Thanks for those were folks standing on the picket line Thursday, which was the first day of the strike, they were right outside the maintenance operation headquarters for Pbot. Now, I want to share a little bit about what Pbot has said regarding how the strike might impact the transportation system. Keep in mind that we're not going to get Pbot on record about this, this is just not something they're going to address in the media, given that it's a sensitive negotiation with local four, a three, the Union, but Pbot has put out a statement of sorts on the City of Portland website that I wanted to make sure folks knew about. If you go over there, I'll provide the link in the show notes. But I think it's important for people to keep in mind as you hear it, as you heard in some of those interviews, I actually asked some of the some of the strikers and some of the workers what they thought. But there's important stuff to know about how bike lanes and roads will be impacted. So here's what Pbot says on the City of Portland website about how the strike will impact streets. So they say that the following Pbot services will be prioritized. But quote, the public may experience longer than normal response times to things like ensuring roads are closed in the event of downed trees and landslides. We have like another storm approaching and, and fallen trees has actually been a pretty big deal on Portland Street. So that's something to look out for. They're saying that it's going to take longer for them to replace stop signs, malfunctioning traffic signals and other damaged pieces of infrastructure, of course, and they actually say that some services are completely on pause or on hold right now. A side note to this is that Mayor Wheeler in a state of emergency of sort of pre empting, the strike that they knew was coming has said that they're going to free up some protocols or money or both to hire like replacement workers, right private contractors to come in and do some of the work like you've heard me ask some of those strikers about there supposed to be some backfilling of workers that are going to come in and do some of this stuff. But obviously, it's not going to be sort of a plug and play. Perfect situation. So to go back to what Pbot is saying, publicly on their website, the following services are actually completely on hold while the strike is happening. That includes city wide street sweeping and cleaning. So just hold that hold on to that for a second. That means that any bike lanes that are full of debris and leaves and other junk, which there are many right now, as I say this, those are just not going to get swept or cleaned at all. Pbot is basically saying that, that's just not going to happen. And then there's other things like they actually call out, they're not going to be doing repairs to bike lane delineators. Those are our favorite friends, the little plastic one thing is so if those are down and missing and or broken, those won't be replaced while the strike is happening. They won't be sprucing up pavement markings, like bike lane symbols, or sheroes, or the green paint that helps that helps designate biking space, and that sort of thing. So those are some of the impacts P bought is warning can happen as this strike goes on. They do have a section on their site that talks about what you can do during the strike. First of all, monitor bikeportland. They don't say that I'm saying that follow us at bikeportland on Twitter, which is where we tend to do more sort of timely updates and quicker updates on stuff like this. But you can also call they're still saying to call Pbot maintenance operations dispatch. It's not as if there's no one home at all. Like I said, there are still some workers there. And Pbot is trying to backfill with replacements and private contractors. So it looks like they're still running their maintenance operation dispatch line which you can call 24/7 at 823 1700. So that's 503823 1700 and you can also email the dispatch line at PDX roads At Portland oregon.gov If you want to make a service request, I also want to make a quick mention of the Parks and Recreation Bureau has also put out a statement saying what to expect because of the strike. And there are some things specifically that bike riders would need to know. They're saying that there will probably be impacts to sort of, they say safety, cleanliness and operability of park grounds and facilities. So you may be wondering why we're talking about that on bikeportland. But keep in mind, we do have a lot of bikeways and bike paths that run through parks facilities that Portland Parks and Rec is in charge of managing, I'm thinking, let's say Irving Park, if you're on if you're on Ninth, right, if you're on the Greenway there on Ninth and you're headed through Irving Park, or things like Mount Tabor, that's a Portland Parks and Rec facility, obviously. And like I mentioned before, the Springwater corridor is essentially a city park. So is what the waterfront park path and even the west side, Greenway path there that goes along the Willamette. These are all things that as the strike wears on, we could see get in even worse and worse shape. So that gives you an idea of sort of what the strike is about what what workers are saying about it, and how the city is responding to it so far, and what some of the impacts are that we can expect. So I hope this was helpful to you. I'm going to be trying to do more episodes like this that are a little bit more news oriented and quicker turnaround. In addition to some of the longer interviews, I've got some interesting interviews planned in the weeks ahead. I'll be sitting down with transportation researcher, Tara Goddard coming up and I've also got an interview planned with former Metro council president and former executive director of transit center, David Bragdon. So stay tuned for those things. And as always, thank you for listening. Thank you for being a subscriber and supporter of bikeportland. If you aren't one yet, please consider signing up as a subscriber financial support from readers and listeners is absolutely crucial to our survival. And thank you so much for listening. This is your host Jonathan Maus, and I'll see you in the streets.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai