TriMet isn’t doing enough to protect the safety and health of its front-line employees amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to the union that represents some 2,700 of the transit agency’s front-line workers.

Jon Hunt, vice president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757, said this week that those concerns extended to how TriMet handled its own buildings and employee-only areas behind scenes. Union representatives said they’ve heard increasing angst from workers this week, even as ridership continues to plunge and the agency attempts to sanitize more public “touch spots” like transit stations and payments stations.

“By no means are we doing everything I think that we can do,” Hunt said.

While everyone is doing what they can amid the ever-changing crisis, union officials said there’s been inadequate communication from top brass and a lack of sufficient cleaning supplies.

The union has called for TriMet to declare a state of emergency to allow immediate negotiations with the union to potentially reassign workers to do other tasks, like disinfecting. The union has suggested fare inspectors could be reassigned, for example.

“Call it what it is,” Hunt said, “we’ve got an emergency.”

But TriMet officials say that an emergency declaration isn’t necessary and wasn’t intended to apply to a pandemic.

“TriMet has the necessary tools to handle the pandemic without having to invoke any sort of declaration,” said Roberta Altstadt, a TriMet spokeswoman. She said that the emergency declaration would mean TriMet would need to get the union’s support and agreement on some of its emergency responses, “which would decrease our ability to respond quickly and would likely have significant financial implications for the agency,” she said.

Earlier this week, TriMet said it still had fare inspectors on the system , but the employees were focused on providing security. “They will distance themselves as much as possible from riders while still asking for fares,” Altstadt said this week.

The coronavirus crisis is hitting the agency and its union workforce at an already sensitive time. The workers’ contract expired Nov. 30 and the bargaining unit and TriMet staff have been at an impasse for months.

Ridership last week was down 10% from levels the previous week, compared with a 5% average decline the previous week (with one day as The Oregonian/OregonLive reported plunging 13% from previous figures). In a Facebook post, TriMet said 140,000 fewer riders rode the system on Wednesday than an average day in February.

That amounts to a 56% drop from the average February weekday.

Additional ridership figures are expected to be available next week.

This week’s ridership should plunge further downward, given the more extensive social distancing in effect in Portland, the closure of bars and restaurants and slowdown in economic activity.

Hunt said the unease the whole country feels permeates the union workers as well. Rumors swirled of a total TriMet shutdown, he said, something that thus far hasn’t occurred in any major U.S. city amid the outbreak.

TriMet has repeatedly said it would retain service across the tri-county region because it provides a critical lifeline for health care workers, first responders and other people who have to go to work regardless of the public health crisis. But it also said all options were on the table.

“If you shut down the system, somebody better figure out how to take care of them,” Hunt said of the union’s thousands of bus, rail and maintenance workers.

Sound Transit, the Seattle-area rail line, announced significant reductions in service Thursday, but the outbreak is the nation’s worst there. Starting March 21, King County Metro, the region’s bus service, will stop collecting fares and urge able-bodied riders to board from the rear doors. King County Metro also said it would cut service.

TriMet isn’t taking significant action yet to reduce service, though on Thursday it announced that some light rail trains on the Orange, Red and Yellow liners would run in single-vehicle trains instead of the standard two-vehicle cars.

On Friday, it quickly changed tracks again, saying that it was returning to normal service because some riders were concerned that single-vehicle trains “may get more crowded,” which defeats the social distancing guidelines TriMet said it’s trying to adhere to.

Hunt and other union representatives also expressed concern about the level of sanitation equipment provided to the cleaning staff.

Altstadt said the transit agency has struggled to get hand sanitizers and wipes just like other entities nationally. “While we’ve had orders delayed or canceled, we did receive a shipment of 4,000 bottles of hand sanitizer this week,” she said, “and those have been distributed to operators and other frontline staff. We are pursuing other options to create a pipeline for hand sanitizer for the long haul.

Altstadt disagreed that there was inadequate communication from executives to the union workforce. “It’s a stressful and challenging time for everyone so at times there may be confusion. However, TriMet is working to give our employees and our riders a heightened level of communication,” she said, noting the daily check-ins with union leaders, multiple emails to managers and other extensive outreach.

Union officials had pushed to do more midday cleaning at transit stations and other parts of the system, something they said C-Tran officials had already been doing at layover stations throughout the day.

On Friday, TriMet said it now had staff cleaning down Hop validators, ticket machines, pay phones, elevator doors and burins and other significant touchpoint at rail and transit stations every day. It also started workers cleaning up on train vehicles during weekdays, including sanitizing, a “pilot project” the agency was already planning to roll out before the pandemic, Altstadt said.

She added that despite the added leaning, that a surface only stays clean until someone sneezes, couches or touches it.

-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen

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