NEWS
Wausau Metro Ride Bus Drivers May Be Taking Unpaid Time Off And Not By Choice
Jason Klappa
The Wausau Transit Department is proposing eight days of furloughs for thirty two union employees in the Armalagated Transit Union, Local 1168. Wages for non union employees' would also freeze until the end of 2010.
Greg Seubert, Transit Director, said that the furloughs would be scheduled for the June and July months in 2010 because the average passenger levels are lowest.
"Our ridership on an average weekday, non school, which is what the summer is for us...Is about 1300 passengers a day, during our peak times of year, for instance December, once it's cold and snowy, ridership approaches 4,000 passengers a day. We're really trying to select a time of the year when ridership is low," he said.
The furloughs from employee wages and fuel cost from buses being out of service for more than a week would save 61,000 dollars, but Seubert wishes that they had a different alternative.
"No matter what date we choose, it's probably not gonna be a good time and we understand that, we have some budget realities we have to deal with and obviously we would have preferred an avenue that didn't have any impact or didn't include an impact on our customers." He continued, "There's a fairly significant segment of the folks who ride the bus who have few other options and they've been hit by the recession just like everybody else, probably harder than an awful lot of folks."
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