Oregonian takes number two job at ATU international

Ron Heintzman, former president of Portland-based Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 757, has been appointed to the number-two position in his international union.

Heintzman, 56, will be executive vice president — responsible for assigning and overseeing the work of 18 international vice presidents and four special representatives. He’ll also be in charge of the union’s organizing efforts, and he would be next in line if the international union presidency becomes vacant.

ATU has about 148,000 active members and 37,000 pensioners, with 264 locals across 44 states and nine Canadian provinces. The union represents mass transit workers in most large cities in the United States and Canada, plus school bus drivers and mechanics, and emergency medical service personnel.

In ATU, international vice presidents are full-time paid staff, responsible for negotiating contracts as assigned by the union. They also make up the international’s General Executive Board, which makes decisions between conventions. Heintzman has been an international vice president since 2002, and has helped bargain union contracts in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas. In that time, though there have been several short strikes and some negotiations that dragged on 18 months, Heintzman said he has never failed to reach agreement.

Heintzman’s new position came open when its current occupant announced plans to retire July 31. Heintzman leapfrogged more senior members of the General Executive Board to win the appointment, bucking tradition within the international. But ATU International President Warren George’s choice of Heintzman received majority approval at the May 1 meeting of the General Executive Board. Heintzman will need to run for re-election at the next ATU convention in September 2010.

Heintzman told the Labor Press he plans to ramp up organizing at the international, particularly among paratransit workers, who transport senior and disabled riders.

He also expects to take more of an interest in D.C. politics than he has in the past. Heintzman and others at ATU are sensing that mass transit could have job growth potential as society shifts to combat global warming. Heintzman attended the United Nations climate change talks in Poland October 2008 as part of a U.S. labor delegation, and he’ll observe the next round of talks this December in Copenhagen.

“If we going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Heintzman said, “one way to do that is to take cars off the road and replace them with transit.”

Driving a bus is both a “green job” and a union job that can’t be shipped overseas. And yet, with nationwide mass-transit ridership at a 50-year high, 90 percent of transit agencies have cut service or raised fares, according to a recent survey by the American Public Transportation Association.

ATU is pushing a bill in Congress that would allow federal transit money to be used for operating expenses, not just new equipment and construction.

Heintzman’s early background was in criminal justice. He spent most of his childhood in North Dakota, but finished high school in Seattle. He graduated from Washington State University in Pullman in 1975 with a bachelors’ degree in political science on an Army ROTC scholarship, and then served two years active duty as a second lieutenant in the Military Police in Fort Hood, Texas. That was followed by 15 years in the reserves. He moved to Oregon in 1977 to take a job as an agent for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, then attended the police academy in Monmouth, and earned a master’s degree in criminal justice at the University of Portland. He joined TriMet as a transit police officer in 1982, and ran for union president in 1988 on a platform of drivers’ safety.

The new job starts Aug. 1 and will require Heintzman to relocate to the Washington, D.C., area. The farm near Mt. Angel where Heintzman and his wife Linda have lived and raised horses the last 13 years is for sale. The couple’s two daughters, 17 and 19, will accompany them in the move.