Unfortunately for the drivers Brega has appealed Judge Kelly's decision allowing the Union to proceed with the arbitration process. The Appellate Court in NYC will now be handling the appeal. Judging from previous cases this could take many months. That means the drivers will be without healthcare for many more months, and saving Brega thousands of dollars if he had to pay for the drivers health care. The Rockland County Legislature was warned something like this would happen, but politics and egos got in the way....
The Rockland County Supreme Court was able to see through the smoke and mirrors
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Brega Transport lost in Court on June 10th and must now go to binding arbitration with the drivers Union. Will Brega Transport go out of business as stated by his lawyers if the drivers get what they are entitled to?
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These were Brega's lawyers exact words:
"Petitioner is likely to succeed on the merits and the potential harm to Petitioner of the aforesaid expired agreement going to binding arbitration is enormous because it could conceivably cause Petitioner to go out of business, default on its obligations, and cause all of Respondent's members to lose their jobs. Therefore, a stay of arbitration is clearly warranted".
Scary words, but Judge Kelly did not buy into it. I would assume the County has a performance bond if they did default. As for drivers loosing their jobs, they all lost their jobs when Coach USA lost the contract. If Brega Transport defaults, another carrier will step in and hire all the drivers just like Brega Transport did. But what WILL happen if the drivers get their health benefits back? Will the County give more money to Brega. They vowed that would never happen. Can Brega can afford it, that's where the $6,000,000+ that Brega underbid comes into play, it had to come from somewhere and that somewhere was in the pay and health care benefits of some 100 drivers. The two other bidders were only $250,000 apart over the entire 5 year contract, $50,000/yr, darn close. Coach USA knew to the penny how much is cost to operate the system using Union drivers as did MV Transportation. I guess Brega thought they could disregard all the safeguards put into place to protect the drivers by the FTA, were they right? Judge Kelly did not think so....and the story continues....
