The head of the Port Authority's East Liberty garage — where drivers last month staged a two-day work slowdown over a dispute with management — has been fired, along with his stepson, officials with the transit agency said.
Lenny Strazza, 39, a nine-year employee of the Port Authority of Allegheny County, was fired Feb. 4. Also fired that day was Strazza's stepson, Scott McGill, hired in December as a foreman at the Harmar garage.
Bob Grove, a spokesman for the authority, confirmed that Strazza and McGill were terminated, but would not say on what grounds.
"The separation is unrelated to the service issue we had at East Liberty about three weeks ago," Grove said of Strazza's dismissal.
On Jan. 15 and 16, about half of the 60 East Liberty drivers who had signed up for voluntary overtime took their names off the list at the last minute, leaving the Port Authority scrambling to provide scheduled service and causing some passengers to miss their buses.
About 300 of the 4,000 daily trips from the garage were canceled, and the transit agency called in drivers from other garages to make up the shortfall.
Strazza, a nine-year employee of Port Authority, was promoted to manager of the East Liberty garage last May from the West Mifflin garage, where he had served as manager of maintenance.
Strazza said Port Authority officials brought him to East Liberty to sort out personnel problems, then abandoned him when he clashed with some of the drivers.
"That came about by people being forced to follow the rules, and there's a small percentage that have a problem with that," Strazza said.
Strazza would not comment further, other than to say that he was seeking legal advice.
