BY JACOB SZETO

PORTLAND – TriMet and its employee union presented their final offers to each other on Wednesday after previous negotiations failed.

According to Jonathon Hunt, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), division 757, President-Business Representative, contract negotiations have stalled because of disagreements on healthcare and pensions. Under the final offer proposed by TriMet, new employees hired after April 1, 2012 and all employees who retire after April 1, 2012 would have significantly reduced benefits.

Specifically, the new hires no longer would be eligible for the pension-style plan currently in place. Instead, they would be offered a defined contribution plan, similar to a 401k that many private sector employees receive.

Also reduced are retiree healthcare benefits for any employee who retires after April 1, 2012. Instead of receiving fully paid healthcare benefits during early retirement until Medicare, early retirees would be reduced to three years of benefits.

Hunt equated his union members’ jobs to those of firefighters and police, also stating:

“Our members are professionals in what they do. We are going to strive to make safety our number one issue. The last thing they should have to worry about is healthcare.”

TriMet has notoriously large healthcare benefits and is among the top in the nation for transit districts. These benefits have led to an unfunded liability of $632 million, at their last calculation more than two and a half years ago.

TriMet’s ATU pension plan is also underfunded by $31.5 million, or just 67.4 percent funded, the lowest it has been since 2007.

Calls to TriMet for comment went unreturned.

ATU’s final offer asked for the status quo. This would mean that the previous contract would continue as is, extending cost-of-living increases, wage increases and benefits into the coming contract term of three years.

The ATU collective bargaining agreement with TriMet expired at the end of November 2009. After the 150-day good faith bargaining failed to reach an agreement, the two parties entered mediation.

An impasse was declared July 13, which meant that all negotiation had failed and final offers had to be submitted by July 21. Final offers are required to be made public and are the first chance anyone outside the negotiations can see what is on the table.

Several steps must take place before the contract goes to binding arbitration, in which an arbitrator will choose one of the parties’ “last best offers,” which are different from the final offer.