The 16-day regional transit strike is over, and buses resumed their regular schedules today, March 28.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Daniel Nishigaya on Wednesday granted an injunction ordering striking Valley Transportation Authority employees back to work.

The judge ruled that the union’s strike – supported overwhelmingly by members in a strike vote and in rejections of two contract offers  – was illegal because it violated a “no-strike” clause in the contract that expired March 10.

The VTA posted a notice this morning that VTA bus service was "fully restored" today, and that light rail trains could start as early as Monday.

The status of the bus and light rail schedules had been unclear Wednesday evening, following the court ruling ending the strike. The VTA said all 1,500 employees were back at work Thursday.

Commuters were encouraged to check the VTA website for details of the resumption of service. Approximately 100,000 riders use VTA buses and trains daily.

The judge granted a permanent injunction, agreeing with arguments presented by VTA in an afternoon Superior Court hearing, and rejecting arguments from lawyers for Amalgamaged Transit Union Local 265.

The judge’s ruling did not address any of the disagreements that prompted the strike.

Before the court hearing began, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan weighed in, warning in an op-ed piece in sanjoseinside.com that meeting union demands “would force VTA to cut routes, raise fares, or lay people off.”

“VTA operators are already among the highest paid in the country,” wrote Mahan. “The average operator earns more than $100,000 annually in salary and benefits, while the majority of riders make under $60,000 per year and nearly 21% earn less than $15,000.”

In a late afternoon statement posted on its website, the VTA said the judge’s ruling “will return affordable transportation to tens of thousands of people in Santa Clara County who rely on it to get to jobs, school and other important destinations,” but didn’t say when. The transit agency promised the decision “will get our employees back to work after they've been without paychecks for more than two weeks.”

“We hope this ruling will encourage ATU to return to the bargaining table with a proposal that will resolve the contract conflict,” the VTA said in its statement..

The decision didn’t break the impasse over a new three-year contract. It broke the strike.

Now it’s up to the negotiators for the two sides – which are far apart – to agree on a contract. It remains to be seen whether the resumption of mediation sessions will work, or whether the VTA will simply play a waiting game, to see how long the workers will work without a contract.

A mediation session – requested by the union – on Monday failed to produce any agreement.

It also remains to be seen whether the agency will retaliate against any of the workers.

As the union said in a Monday evening post after its members rejected a slightly upgraded contract offer, “the sticking points remain the same.”

“The VTA refuses to put forth a proposal with living wages that allow their workers to live in the communities they serve,” the union said. “They continue to propose unfair grievance procedures and repressive overtime calculations, along with no assurances that the agency will not discipline or sue workers who went on strike.”

Ray Singh, the president and business agent of Local 265, said, “While we don’t want this strike to go on for the sake of our riders and the community, the VTA is responsible for this with their bullying and repressive bargaining tactics.”

Three decades of journalism experience, as a writer and editor with Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Lee newspapers, as a business journal editor and publisher and as a weekly newspaper editor in Scotts Valley and Gilroy; with the Weeklys group since 2017. Recipient of several first-place writing and editing awards, California News Publishers Association.