EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Detour Into the Future? : Firms Scramble to Help Staff Find Alternatives to Driving

As Juli Oborne boarded a Metrolink train in the pre-dawn hours one day last week at Santa Clarita, she vowed: “Today, I’m going to do battle with my boss. I’ll stand on the branch manager’s desk to get that shuttle.�

But in the new post-quake environment, dramatics weren’t necessary. Beginning today, Oborne and half a dozen fellow workers at Law/Crandall Inc., an environmental consulting firm in City of Commerce, will find a company car waiting at Union Station for the last leg of their commute.

Oborne’s boss is operating in an abruptly changed world of work these days, as are thousands of other Southern California employers who had previously ranged from ardent to halfhearted in their support of ride-sharing, telecommuting and flexible work hours.

While politicians, academics and others expound on the earthquake’s message that Southern Californians must rethink the way they work, employers are wrestling with immediate real-world dilemmas that aren’t readily solved by the advice of theoreticians.

Many service jobs and certain industries, notably hotels and restaurants, will never lend themselves to such alternatives as employees working at home computers.

“Digital transferal of your ham and eggs doesn’t really work,� said Neil Cohen, a Hilton Hotels Corp. vice president.

Meanwhile, until freeways return to normal and all job sites are back in operation, it won’t be clear how much commuting patterns are changing--or how long such changes might last.

“Everybody suspects that, yes, changes have happened in targeted areas,� said Bruce de Terra, a transportation planner at the California Department of Transportation’s Office of Traffic Improvement. “But there’s so little you can get a grip on right now.�

Still, virtually all major employers have plans in the works to help improve the commutes of their workers, many of whom face mundane but difficult hurdles such as the one Oborne and her colleagues overcame.

“Most employers are trying to supplement Metrolink, so they are looking to establish some kind of shuttle or short-distance van pool,� said Sandy Boyle, regional manager in the Long Beach customer service center of VPSI Inc., a subsidiary of Chrysler Corp. that provides van pools to companies and individual riders.

Inquiries about space on her vans have doubled lately, Boyle said. However, many employers--strapped because of Southern California’s three-year recession--apparently have yet to commit to paying for such services over time.

“In some cases, employers are stepping forward and saying, ‘We’re going to pay for it as long as we can,’ � Boyle said. “Other employers hope to persuade the (Metropolitan Transit Authority) or Metrolink to provide these services for them.�

Commuter Transportation Services, the five-county nonprofit group that helps employers and employees find ride-sharing partners, has had to hire more workers and add 20 phone lines to its 800 number to handle a 600% increase in calls since the quake.

“We’ve had a tremendous response,� spokeswoman Roberta Tinajero said.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown, Gov. Pete Wilson and others announced the formation of the Southern California Emergency Telecommuting Partnership, which offers information and other support for home telecommuting, including equipment and software donated by IBM, Intel, AT&T; and other companies ((800) 6-INFO-HWY).

“People who were stranded and isolated by the earthquake have a way to be productive again,� said Susan Herman, general manager for the Los Angeles city Department of Communications.

Even when the nature of the business precludes some workplace innovations, staffs have been encouraged to try new ideas.

While Hilton’s personnel must still show up at the hotels, many of the more than 300 employees at its corporate headquarters in Beverly Hills have been offered flexible work hours, computer and fax equipment for telecommuting and more ride-sharing opportunities since the quake.

Though Sizzler International’s chefs still have to show up in the restaurants, even before the quake 40% of its corporate headquarters staff in Los Angeles used some form of ride-sharing, telecommuting, flexible work hours or public transportation.

Meanwhile, some of the region’s biggest employers have shifted gears, revving up programs started since 1988 in response to the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s ride-sharing rule.

Ironically, the AQMD’s Regulation XV, which requires all companies with 100 or more workers to offer incentives for employee ride-sharing, was eased somewhat the Friday before the quake. The AQMD, in response to heavy criticism from recession-plagued businesses, gave companies a two-year hiatus on planned increases in the incentives they must offer to employees to encourage ride-sharing.

The district will now allow special credit, however, to firms that donate telecommuting facilities and other help to businesses.

But due to the quake, Bank of America--the state’s largest private employer with nearly 30,000 workers in the Los Angeles area--has bought $100,000 worth of Metrolink passes to sell to employees at its larger work sites. The bank has also installed a toll-free phone number to give information on mass transit to employees, and it is setting up a shuttle system to connect its major work centers to Metrolink stations.

BofA has long offered $60 a month in subsidies to mass-transit users, as well as flexible time schedules when workers can arrange them with their supervisors. Now it is also providing computers to employees who can telecommute from home and switching workers to four-day, 10-hour-a-day workweeks where possible.

Such compressed workweek options have looked better to many companies since an executive order from Sacramento. On Jan. 20, Wilson temporarily suspended state labor laws requiring that overtime be paid after eight hours of work.

“This has proven to be very popular with people because you’ve taken a day off the workweek commute cycle, and you can also make it easier to miss the worst commute times,� BofA spokesman Bob Wynne said.

Hewlett Packard Co. has offered flexible work hours to its more than 800 Los Angeles area employees since 1978, but it is still debating other measures that many companies have already adopted.

Rockwell International Corp. is also still making the adjustment to workplace flexibility.

Rockwell’s Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park was hit hard by the quake. Since then, the company, which had tried only small pilot projects in telecommuting, has set up computers in its Palmdale facility that it expects to be used by as many as 60 Canoga Park employees living in the Antelope Valley. Car- and van-pooling--3,500 of Rockwell’s 21,000 employees in the Los Angeles basin participated before the quake--are also up.