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AC Transit Bus drivers facing certain job cuts over the pending December elimination of 34 bus lines—nearly one in four—voted Saturday to stage a one-day weekday walkout, the date yet to be determined. 

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, representing the drivers, will petition Alameda’s central labor council next week to sanction the work stoppage to protest potential layoffs and service cuts that union officials say target poorer neighborhoods. 

“The real issue is that service is being ripped out of Richmond, North Oakland and West Oakland,” said Local 192 President Christine Zook. 

After two pulic hearings in June, the AC Transit board slashed 34 lines and altered service on 37 others in order to close a budget gap that has spiraled to $50 million dollars in a $250 million dollar budget. The cuts amount to about 10 percent of all service, and will result in driver layoffs. 

Drivers are under contract through next summer, but union officials say the walkout will help call attention to service cuts they say most riders don’t even know about. 

“People don’t know this is coming, people are going to be waiting for a bus that won’t come,” said Zook. “If we pull service for a day, we can alert everyone now.” 

Zook said the walkout would protest AC Transit’s singling out of lines that serve poor communities. 

Berkeley survived the cuts relatively unscathed, she said, because the city has a lot of activists to bark at AC Transit officials, while other, less organized communities were hard hit. 

Berkeley did suffer losses in the last round of AC Transit cuts that took effect in June. Route 8 that ran from downtown Bart to the Berkeley Hills was eliminated and service to the Marina on Route 51 was canceled. 

Jamie Levin, AC Transit’s director of marketing and communication, called the union’s claims outrageous. “We have no choice but to evaluate [service cuts] on an efficiency standpoint,” he said. “If there are only 20 riders an hour we have no choice but to cut.” 

Many of the doomed routes serve outlying areas and feed into big lines that run down major thoroughfares. 

Transit officials say they hope eliminating these lines will improve efficiency, but Zook worries that if riders can’t get to the main lines, they will stop using the bus altogether. 

AC Transit is pleading with union officials not to pursue the work stoppage, fearing that any shutdown of service would only outrage customers and force them to find other forms of transportation. 

The vote to walk out comes amidst increasing tension between the bus drivers and transit officials. 

Recently some drivers started posting notices on fare boxes warning of future service cuts, some of which transit officials said were untrue. 

Levin pointed to a skull on crossbones he saw hung on a Route 43 bus stating, “this line is dead.” The line, however, is not slated for elimination. 

Other riders reported seeing fliers and handmade notes warning of line eliminations, including the Number 67 which serves Berkeley, and also has not been affected by the cuts. 

AC Transit included a note with every driver’s paycheck on Aug. 12, warning them that posting or handing out unauthorized fliers was prohibited. 

“This does more damage to the bus service,” Levin said. “It scares riders and it scares the public.” 

Service cuts alone will not plug AC Transit’s deficit. Beginning Sept. 1, fares for 10-ride passes will jump from $13 to $15 and monthly passes will increase from $50 to $60. Also AC Transit ended a pilot program giving free rides to poor high school and middle school students on their way to school. 

AC Transit’s money woes stem from decreased ridership, rising health care costs and the ailing economy. Forty percent of their funding comes from sales tax revenue, which Levin says is down 40 percent this year. Health care payments were up 28 percent last year and the number of riders slipped from 71.6 million in 2001-2002 to 68 million the following year. 

Zook lays much of the blame for the budget shortfall on the Metropolitan Transit Commission which she says shortchanges bus riders in favor of BART and Bay Bridge commuters. 

“We’re picking crumbs off the table,” she said. “If there were a five to seven-dollar bridge toll, we wouldn’t have transit funding problems.” 

The work stoppage may cause headaches for more than just bus riders. Union officials hope the labor council will persuade other unions to join in sympathy with the drivers. Labor council representatives refused to speculate on sympathy strikes. 

When UC Berkeley clerical workers staged a three-day walkout last year, unionized construction and delivery workers boycotted the campus. 

AC Transit riders polled Sunday in downtown Berkeley expressed sympathy for the drivers, but opposed any walkout.  

“They need to organize mini-buses or some other alternative so people can get to work, said Oakland resident J. Pierre. Would a walkout make her give up on AC Transit? “I don’t have any other way to get to work,” she said.