To increase productivity and achieve promised operating budget savings, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City wished to optimize bus maintenance routines throughout its different divisions. New York City Transit and the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority entered an agreement with the Local 100, Transport Workers Union of America of Greater New York, AFL-CIO to form a team of delegates, under the supervision of a mediating industrial engineer (IE), to create standard task times for 26 specified bus maintenance core procedures. Within 90 days, this process intended to ( a) create fixed standards for each task, and ( b) reduce times now spent on certain jobs. Throughout the process, labor and management were urged to articulate rationales and listen to explanations. Predictable arguments were initially cited, but these evolved into discussions of new approaches or considerations agreeable to both sides. In a disagreement, the IE tried to narrow differences and facilitate agreement on an intermediary value determined by timed demonstrations. The method invoked an iterative process of negotiation, converging upon the final agreement, which proved to be an interesting heuristic in general for similar mediation processes. This process of union and management coming together on issues of productivity is certainly not new and has been studied in the past. But, at a time when all transit budgets are under fire, issues such as saving jobs while reducing costs assume great importance.
