Archives West Finding Aid

Founded in 1892, Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 587 is the largest ATU local on the West Coast. The local had 4000 active and 300 retired members in King, Clallam and Jefferson counties as of 2011. The main membership is comprised primarily of transit operators, but the union also includes 800 members working in over 80 craft occupations.

ATU Local 587 represents employees of:

King County Metro King County, Washington First Transit King County, Washington Solid Ground King County, Washington Jefferson Transit Authority Jefferson County, Washington Clallam Transit System Clallam County, Washington

ATU 587 has, as of 2012, about 4,000 active and 300 retired members spread throughout King, Jefferson, and Clallam counties, and is the largest West Coast ATU chapter. Also as of 2012, ATU International was the largest transit workers' union in North America, including over 190,000 members in the US and Canada.

On April 8, 1912, the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America, Local 587 was formed by the Rainier Valley Electric Railway Workers. The name was eventually shortened to the Amalgamated Transit Union. The international union itself had been established in 1892, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor. The history of Local 587 is intertwined with that of its major bargaining counterparts: the Seattle Electric Company/Puget Sound Traction, Light, and Power/ Puget Power, Seattle Transit, and Metro Transit/King County Metro Transit. Public transit in Seattle has undergone many changes, peaks, and troughs, each of which greatly affected ATU 587.

The first horse-drawn street railway was built in Seattle in 1884, but horse-drawn cars proved troublesome on the city’s many hills. Horses were soon replaced by the first cable cars, introduced in 1887, and several independent streetcar lines were established. With the economic depression of 1893, many of these lines suffered and were bought but Boston-based Stone & Weber, who managed them under the names the Seattle Electric Company, Puget Sound Traction, Light, and Power, or Puget Power. By 1900, Stone and Webster had acquired twenty-two street railway lines and the main power company.

ATU 587’s first major action came in July 1917. Relations were already tense, as Puget Power had cut wages to compensate for operating losses, but things came to a head when two transit employees were fired for joining ATU 587. The remaining 1,500 employees walked out in response. When Puget Sound Traction, Light, and Power brought in strikebreakers, the striking workers rioted and overturned two streetcars in Pioneer Square. This strike shut down operations in the city and forced shipyards to close, so, as it occurred during WWI, the federal government pressured both sides for arbitration. As a result, ATU 587 did not win a wage increase, but the company was prohibited from firing workers solely for joining the union.

In 1918, Puget Power was losing money, in part due to competition from motorized jitney taxes and the private auto. $400,000 behind in taxes to the city, Puget Power asked the city to lease some of its lines. In response, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson purchased the entire streetcar system from Puget Power (for much more than it was technically worth). Voters approved the plan, paying $15 million (renegotiated to $10 million) and the city assumed control in 1919, renaming the system the Seattle Municipal Railway. After a few years, the city also began to struggle to pay for this system, especially with fares set at the low price of a nickel. To remedy the problem in 1939, Seattle Mayor Arthur Langlie borrowed $10.2 million from New Deal agency the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to pay off Puget Power and purchase 235 trolley buses and 102 motor coaches. By 1941, the last streetcar ran in Seattle (until the 1980s, when streetcars were revived by the waterfront, and later in South Lake Union.

During WWII, ridership rose to 57 million as the government rationed gasoline, while ATU 587 made wartime concessions. A new group of younger leadership took over the ATU 587 in 1945 and committed themselves to strengthening the union and increasing assertiveness. The ATU 587 made major gains in the postwar period, obtaining paid vacation and the first operator wages over $2 per hour.

In the 1950s, though, ridership decreased as Seattleites spread to the suburbs. Tensions grew as Seattle Transit lost money but ATU 587 remained assertive, until union members went on strike in 1956. The city of Seattle eventually won an injunction that declared public employee strikes illegal. Suburban sprawl continued, while voters did not approve sources of funding for transit proposed by the Forward Thrust program. By 1973, it became evident that even the survival of the system was in question, as Seattle Transit faced impending bankruptcy. The Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle (Metro), established in 1958 to deal with waste treatment in the greater Seattle area, received voter authorization to take over the transit system in King County by 1973. With this shift, ATU Local 1384, associated with privately owned Metropolitan Transit Corporation, merged into ATU 587.

Metro Transit tried to decrease costs, to the frustration of ATU 587; at the time, Seattle transit employees made about 15-20% less than employees in other West Coast cities and lacked a cost-of-living adjustment in the face of rapid inflation. Yet Metro was hiring rapidly, and was hesitant to also give employees, new and old, these benefits. ATU 587 went on strike for 15 days in 1974, asking for higher wages and benefits, but Metro was not compliant. A federal mediator was brought in, and parties eventually settled on sick leave, an eight-hour day, and a 34% wage increase for drivers and mechanics, plus cost-of-living increases, though other Metro Transit employees did not gain quite so much. In 1977, Metro instituted part-time drive positions to provide sufficient service during peak times without losing massive amounts of money in off-peak hours. Some ATU 587 members protested this policy with some strategic sickouts, as part-time drivers violated the guarantee of an eight-hour day. However, the union’s eventual position when negotiating the installation of part-time drivers was to try to make the position undesirable, with few benefits, in the hopes that having part-time employees would be untenable and Metro would eliminate the position. This tactic proved shortsighted in many ways, as there were many part-time drivers, so ATU 587 spent much of the following decades trying to improve the working conditions of part-timers. Other issues arose regarding seniority between part-time and full-timer drivers, to be negotiated in the coming decades.

Metro made some changes to operations in Seattle in the 1970s-1990s. It instituted the Ride Free downtown area, implemented services for the handicapped like wheelchair lifts and Paratransit Services, and proposed a 1.3 mile bus tunnel in 1987, completed in 1990. However, Metro ceased to exist in 1994, as it was found unconstitutional, and was replaced by the King County Metro.

ATU 587 has shown concern for worker rights and workplace conditions over the years, particularly in the 1980s-2000s, the period most strongly covered by this collection. In 1980, ATU 587 codified past practice and work rules by writing up extensive contracts, which grew to hundreds of pages and gave the union a stronger legal basis for grievances and other requests. ATU 587 began to represent Clallam Transit Services and Jefferson Transit Authority in the early 1980s, and Paratransit Services in the 1990s. The ATU also was politically active in the 1980s, supporting Greg Nickels for King County Council. In 1989, the Department of Transportation, a federal organization that subsidized much of Metro Transit, began to require random drug testing. This policy led the ATU 587 to a court battle, which it eventually lost. Metro Transit and ATU 587 suffered a tragedy in 1998 when Metro operator Mark McLaughlin was attacked by a gunman while driving a bus across the Aurora Bridge. The bus crashed and fell off the bridge, killing McLaughlin, the shooter, and a passenger. In 2003, the ATU 587 supported a move to bring surveillance cameras onto buses, arguing that cameras would help prevent assaults on drivers. ATU 587 concerns in the last few decades have included issues such as these about workplace conditions.

Throughout much of the 1990s and 2000s, ATU 587 also struggled for higher wages and better benefits as funding for transit remained unstable. Contract negotiations in 1989-1990 proved difficult, as ATU 587 members walked out for several hours and outside negotiators were brought in. ATU 587 won a modest wage increase and benefits. In 1999, State Initiative 695, sponsored by Tim Eyman, proposed to require voter approval for tax increase while lowering vehicle license tab fees from 2.2% of a vehicle’s value to $30. Despite the efforts of the ATU and other groups on the No on I-695 campaign, the initiative passed. Several groups, including ATU 587, took the issue to court, arguing that it did not follow the Washington constitution, which restricts initiatives to one subject. The court threw out I-695, but politicians installed a similar cut on license tabs. In 2000, Eyman proposed another initiative, I-745, which would have designated 90% of state and local transportation for roads, with only 10% left for other forms of transportation. ATU 587 campaigned passionately against the measure, and it was rejected. In 2002, citizens rejected Referendum 51, which would have provided a large amount of funding to improve state transportation, while approving a $30 limit on car tabs. Overall, ATU 587 and King County Metro alike have spent much of the past few decades struggling to find stable transit funding.