Take Backward Our Union

MONDAY, MAY 4, 2009

We Can't Wait Until After the Election-by Steve Downs

We Can’t Wait Until After the Election bySteve Downs Division Chair, T/O Division

Hundreds of transit workers are under the threat of lay-offs. Local 100 is still without contracts at the TA, MaBSTOA, and MTA Bus. Service cuts and a fare hike are on the horizon. And the best Local 100’s leadership can do in response is to call for hearings in Albany and threaten to hold some anemic demonstrations outside the MTA offices. But Albany is part of the problem and the demonstration on April 24 was a show of weakness, not strength.

It’s clear that the current Local 100 leadership does not have a viable strategy for protecting our jobs or achieving a good contract. But we cannot wait until after the elections to address the problems our union faces. As a member of the Local and the elected chair of the T/O division, I propose the following immediate steps toward securing our jobs, a good contract, and a stronger union:

1. Convene a Joint Executive Board meeting Bring the Local officers, Executive Board members, division officers and section chairs together to discuss how best to stop lay-offs and service cuts and how to win a good contract. Forget the speeches from politicians and the posturing by Local officers. Let’s have an honest and open discussion about where we are and then take steps to get what we need. Better yet, hold a summit meeting of the current Local officers, Board members and Division officers along with all the candidates for those positions. Put all of our heads together for the benefit of the union and the membership.

2. Enforce all safety and operating rulesThe MTA wants to get more work out of fewer people. The truth is that we need more workers to have a safe, clean, and efficient bus and subway system. We need to strictly enforce all safety and operating rules. The Local needs to lead this effort and provide staff and resources to help make it happen. But the union reps can’t do this on their own. Every member needs to step up, coordinate with their co-workers, and work in strict accordance with all safety and operating rules.

3. Fight to suspend the payments on MTA bondsFor over 20 years, whether Democrats or Republicans were in office, the city, state and federal governments cut operating subsidies for mass transit. Under Pataki Albany refused to provide funds for the capital spending needed to maintain and improve the system. The MTA had to borrow money to buy subway cars and buses and rebuild tracks and stations. The bonds the MTA issued provided fat commissions to bankers, safe returns to investors – and drain off money from the farebox. Now, although the MTA is threatening layoffs, service cuts, a fare increase, and a wage freeze, the interest payments that are at the root of the MTA’s budget crisis are not being questioned. Local 100 should lead the coalition of MTA union’s in demanding that the interest payments on the MTA’s debt be suspended as a first step toward resolving the MTA’s budget crisis.--

Steve DownsChair, T/O Division of TWU 100 for more information and updates go to www.tbou.org

Remember this?

MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2009

No Contract For TWU Still No Plan from Toussaint & Tate

The Daily News reported last week that the MTA will soon meet with Acting President Curtis Tate to tell him there is no money for raises this year. This bad news comes only a week after the MTA announced that 1500 TWU members may lose their jobs.

What is our Union’s strategy for getting a good contract in the face of this terrible news? According to our Union’s website, the Tate/Roberts/Watt team’s response is to “not attend” the meeting to learn the details of the problem. Pretty feeble response to a really bad situation, don’t you think?

The fact is the Tate/Roberts/Watt team doesn’t know what to do and is in a state of panic. They have repeatedly shown that they have no idea about how to properly run Local 100, return it to the power it once had and get a good contract for the members.

For a year, during all of 2008, the Tate/Roberts/Watt team allowed Toussaint to secretly negotiate our contract with the MTA. The membership was not mobilized for a contract campaign and not one word was ever said to the membership about the progress of negotiations. The only progress report we ever got was the shocking news that Toussaint decided to put our contract into binding arbitration without getting any Executive Board approval. The Tate/Roberts/Watt team just stood there silently and let Toussaint take away the right of the membership to vote on the contract.

After putting our contract into binding arbitration, it was doubly shocking to find out that Toussaint appointed himself to be one of the arbitrators. Again, the Tate/Roberts/Watt team and their Executive Board simply stood there, did nothing and let Toussaint give himself the power to decide the terms of our contract.

In early January on the Union’s website Toussaint promised that, “In the weeks ahead, arbitration hearings will proceed and a final decision will be issued.” To our knowledge hearings have not occurred. And weeks have turned into months as the news about what is happening gets worse and worse.

After leading a disastrous strike that nearly destroyed Local 100, Toussaint and Watt should have rebuilt the Union and organized the members for a full court press to get a good contract. Instead, it appears that Toussaint - supported every step of the way by the Tate/Roberts/Watt team - thought he could get a good contract by simply being nice and asking for one.

As one of three Arbitrators, all Toussaint now has to do to get us a contract with good wage increases, no layoffs, no bus regionalization, no new reduced pension tiers and which restores our free health insurance is get one of the other two arbitrators to agree with him. The Tate/Roberts/Watt team’s strategy for getting such a contract has been to bet on Toussaint while keeping the membership completely demobilized. That’s a bad strategy. The recent demonstration - where only about 1,000 members showed-up to protest against layoffs - shows how hard it is to carry on an effective fight after spending years demobilizing the membership.

If elected, Take Back Our Union (TBOU) will rebuild Local 100 by organizing, mobilizing and uniting the membership in a Union that has real power in the subways and on the buses and in the halls of government to get us good contracts. We don’t bet. We believe in a sure thing: having a Union with real power that management must respect. John Samuelsen President candidate Take Back Our Union (TBOU).

Contract 3

Tier wage system must be destroyed Local 100 contract of 2012 should not accept dual wages structure as part of it’s contract concession bargaining. This may be suitable in other industries in which two-tier systems have been adopted such as airlines, trucking, retail grocery and automobile manufacturing. However our contract having this dual tier wage structure is harmful to the membership and it benefits the employer.

A two tier wage system establishes two pay scales in the company, a lower one for a newly hired workers and a higher one for existing employees. They can be either temporary or permanent. In a temporary system such as ours new employees are hired at a lower wage than employees that were hired earlier, but over time can advance to the top pay scale. In some recent contracts in the trucking industry, for example new hires are paid at 70 percent of the going rate of the hourly pay, but must be brought up to the full rate after 3 years.

In a permanent system, new workers start at a lower wage scale and never reach parity. An example is in the airline industry where at one company ‘B-scale’ flight attendants begin at $972 a month and peak at $1,199 a month in their 5th year, whereas ‘A-scale’ attendants employed prior to fifteen years started at $1,194 a month, and reached $1,837 in the 5th year, and toped out at $2,217 a month in the 12th year.

This ridculous two tier wage systems were accepted by unions in situations where employers might have gone out of business or substantially reduced employment without wage relief. The savings for employers are often substantial - approximately $100 million a year for American Airlines, for example. Confronted with a demand for concessions, unions often found a two tier system the easiest to grant, since the existing membership lost nothing and new workers who bore the cost had no vote in the contract ratification process. In our situation Samuelsen who is a Toussaint protege and loyalist with the current leadership of TBOU - Local 100 could not help new hires in the layoff.

This absurd two tier wage systems may save some jobs, but it also has a number of drawbacks. Low morale and higher turnover among new employees is a cost employers pay. Phony unions such as our Local 100 which has accepted this two tier wage system under Samuelsen and TBOU, are aware that it could destroy the membership’s solidarity and violate the principle of equal pay for equal work. For us workers, the principal drawback is that a two tier system leads to considerable divisiveness - the new employees resent earning less than the older workers, while the older workers fear that the new employees will take their jobs.

We recommend this two tier wage system must be abolished, in the contract of 2012, we believe Mr. Steve Downs, Chair, T/O division, who is an excellent, skilled, haggler and negotiator who always fights for solidarity will accomplish this task.