Gazette-Times business editor

Union leaders are recommending approval of a proposed labor agreement for Corvallis bus drivers.

The 65 or so school and city bus drivers in the local operation of Laidlaw Transit have been working without a contract since June 30, when the previous agreement expired. Negotiators for Laidlaw and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents the drivers, came to a tentative deal in a mediation session Thursday at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Jonathan Hunt, president of ATU Local 757, said the proposal represented progress for the drivers.

“We are going to be recommending it to the membership,” he said.

The Corvallis drivers are scheduled to vote on the proposal April 2.

Laidlaw Transit’s local manager did not return a phone call seeking comment Friday.

Hunt said the new contract, a three-year deal that would run through June 2009, contains some language changes that resolve lingering issues. While he declined to go into specifics, he said the proposal includes increases to both wages and benefits.

Currently, the starting wage for a school bus driver in Laidlaw’s Corvallis fleet is $9.93 an hour, while city bus drivers start at $15.34 an hour. The rates were incorrectly reported in Friday’s Gazette-Times.

Headquartered in Portland, ATU Local 757 represents 23 bargaining units in Oregon and parts of Washington.

The local is currently in trusteeship, with its operations under the control of the international union. Hunt said the international is investigating allegations of embezzlement against its suspended financial secretary.

Although the suspended financial secretary has not been charged with a crime, Hunt said the official is accused of siphoning a “significant amount of money” from an account set up to pay for child and elder care for union drivers in the Portland-area Tri-Met transit system.

“No dues money was taken from the membership,” Hunt said. “The money that was taken only affects Tri-Met workers.”

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.