Members of the Teamsters Local 966 overwhelmingly rejected a proposed salary contract with the nonprofit Oahu Transit Services Inc., which runs the city's bus service.
The final vote count last night showed 832 - nearly 82 percent of those who voted - bus drivers, mechanical and clerical workers of TheBus cast their ballots against the contract while 186 came out in favor of it, union officials said. Nearly 300 employees didn't vote.
While talk of contract rejection swirled long before the final count, the more than 4-to-1 dismissal caught even union leaders off guard.
"We were assuming that it wasn't going to pass," Teamsters President Melvin Kahele said. "I was surprised that it was overwhelming. A lot of the employees at OTS felt that there needs to be some (changes) in the package."
But a strike "would be the last thing we want to do," Kahele said. "I'm trying to avoid that. I'm sure the company wants to do the same." The last Oahu bus drivers' work stoppage occurred more than two decades ago, when the bus service was called Honolulu Rapid Transit, he said.
The proposed five-year tentative agreement included an option for the union to renegotiate wages only during the fourth and fifth years. The employees were offered $1,000 bonuses in the first two years and a 2 percent pay hike the remaining three years.
The city-subsidized contract would have cost about $21.4 million.TheBus employees rejected the deal, among other reasons, because they want a wage hike in the first two years instead of the bonus, Kahele said.
If the nearly 850 bus drivers were to strike, it would cripple public transportation. That's something both sides appear eager to avoid.
"If we have a strike, the public is impacted tremendously," said Roger Morton, the transit service's senior vice president. "The economy is impacted tremendously. We've come pretty close in this thing ... It'd be a shame that we come so close and don't reach an agreement."
Early predictions of a "no" vote by the union membership - despite a majority of the leadership accepting the terms of a preliminary agreement - baffled Oahu Transit officials.
"It's a surprise to me that the leadership would enter into a tentative agreement and the membership not accept it," Morton said.
Just hours before the results of the three-day voting were to be tallied, Oahu Transit officials were optimistic about ratification.
"I still believe that it will be approved," Morton had said. "We're aware that there is a significant amount of unhappiness" among employees.
While union officials said they would like to head back to the negotiating table early next week, Morton said he wasn't sure what management's next move would be. The employees have been without a contract since June.
"We really won't have a reaction for a few days," Morton said. "We'll see what our options are."
Those options don't automatically include going back to the drawing board, he said.
"It's Christmas time and I suspect that everyone has an enormous interest in keeping a cool head and not taking positions that force you into a corner," he said.