Thursday's hearing on a possible RTD drivers and mechanics strike might seem straight out of Alice in Wonderland unless you understand the politics of labor relations in Colorado.

With about 70 people, most of them blind or wheelchair users, crammed into a small hearing room, representatives of the Colorado Division of Labor heard public pleas to deny the workers their right to strike if contract talks between Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001 and the Regional Transportation District reach an impasse.

Local 1001, which filed the notice of intent to strike that prompted the hearing, asked that its request be denied. And RTD officials asked the state to allow a strike, saying that while the public might be inconvenienced by losing half its daily bus service and all of light rail, it wouldn't be bad enough to call off a strike.

The reason for the seemingly contradictory requests is binding arbitration, the union's real goal.

Under the Colorado Labor Peace Act, if the state determines that the strike would interfere with public peace, health and safety, it can prohibit a strike and put the negotiations into arbitration.

Caught in the middle are the transit-dependent riders, such as the dozens who showed up to plead with Mike McArdle, director of the Division of Labor, to prohibit a strike.

"This is beyond an inconvenience," Julie Reiskin, of the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, said of a strike. Reiskin relies on a wheelchair for mobility and on RTD for transportation.

She said the privately operated buses that ran during the weeklong April 2006 strike often were so crowded that people in wheelchairs were passed by at bus stops.

The disabled who rely on RTD need it for access to their jobs, their doctors, their groceries and all sorts of errands that would be a hardship in a strike, she said.

But RTD officials said that people adapt to loss of transit during a strike.

Cal Marsella, RTD general manager, said arbitration would give decision-making over RTD to outside parties.

"Preventing a strike would strip the union of incentive for good-faith bargaining." Marsella told McArdle. A binding settlement that costs RTD more money would hurt riders because it would force even more bus and light-rail cutbacks, RTD said.

RTD and ATU last went to arbitration in 1997, and the settlement cost the transit agency more than it had bargained for.

Marsella said RTD is preparing to operate in the event of a strike. But it would be very different than three years ago. In 2006, only one of the three private companies under contract to run half of RTD's bus service was unionized. Those drivers couldn't be used to fill in on routes normally driven by RTD's own workers.

But Local 1001 went on an organizing drive after that and now represents drivers at all three - First Transit, Laidlaw and Veolia. That means if RTD drivers go on strike, the agency wouldn't call in the private companies to pick up slack, as it did in 2006.

That would idle some of the busiest routes in the city driven by RTD’s workers, including the Route 15 on East Colfax, Route 0 on Broadway and the popular Route B service between Boulder and Denver.

RTD would only operate the routes that are under private contracts, about 43 percent of the total, and wouldn't ask them to pick up routes normally driven those on strike.

“If there is a strike,” Local 1001 President Holman Carter said, “50 percent of all the buses would be pulled out. The remaining buses would be overloaded.”

Marsella said the agency is recruiting replacement drivers, who must have a state commercial driver’s license. Phil Washington, administration manager at RTD, said about 100 such drivers might be hired. Salaried staff and supervisors who are qualified might also be called in to run light rail trains, though at a greatly reduced schedule.