By Carl Bronski - 9 May 2008, wsws.org

Toronto’s Mayor David Miller has referred to the city’s Executive Committee a motion that would designate the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) an essential service. Such a designation would invite action by the provincial government to strip transit workers of the legal right to strike or to so restrict job action as to make it a token gesture.

The call to restrict the right to strike, put forth by two Toronto city councillors, follows closely on the heels of a day-and-a-half walkout by 9,000 transit workers organized in Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).

That job action began on the night of Friday, April 25, after workers overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement recommended by a thin majority of the union’s executive committee. The strike was abruptly ended the following Sunday afternoon when Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty marshalled the unanimous support of the opposition Conservative and New Democratic parties to force the workers back into the subway and bus barns and impose binding arbitration in the contract dispute.

By Jorge Martin - Friday, 18 April 2008

The struggle of the Barcelona bus drivers started on November 21, 2007 with a 5-hour strike. The main demand of the workers was to have two days rest a week. Currently, the drivers work six days a week, with a total of 251 days a year, when most other workers work an average of 228 days a year. They further demanded that this extra day of rest a week should be introduced with no loss of pay and no increase in the working time during the rest of the week.

The origins of the struggle can be found in the signing of the previous collective bargaining agreement on the part of the main unions, UGT, CCOO and SIT, despite the fact that the drivers had rejected it in a ballot.

As the workers explained, having only one day of rest a week has had a serious impact on the family life of the workers, particularly in such a stressful job as driving a bus for more than seven hours a day in a big city like Barcelona. Furthermore, because of the way the rosters are organised, a driver could be away from home for more than 11 hours a day, having worked two shifts and started and finished work in four different points of the city.

Pittsburgh Transit Troubles Continue
Written by Karl Belin
Friday, 11 April 2008

On March 4, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce had alerted its members that a strike could be looming this summer for the city’s public transit workers, whose contract expires in June. The article further reported that many of Pittsburgh’s larger companies, such as Highmark, have been calling meetings to find ways to “solve” the issue of transit problems should a strike take place. One option they have come up with is “beefing up company carpool programs,” which in effect means developing a corporate-run scab shuttle service to break the strike

Developments like this are par for the course in Pittsburgh, where in 1992 the State Supreme Court ruled that the city government had the power to intervene and unilaterally break the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85’s 28-day strike, which brought the city to a stand-still.

Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAT) is the country’s 11th largest public transit system, with 220,000 daily riders who commute on over 1,200 buses and the city’s expanding light rail system (the “T”). PAT has come under increased pressure from the county’s Chief Executive, Dan Onorato, to cut costs, even after massive cuts to services and routes this past summer. For the company, this means cutting into employee benefits and wages.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/agency_fires_driver_over_new_buses/Content?oid=673932

Agency Fires Driver Over New Buses
But driver has last laugh, as court orders AC Transit to reinstate him to position.
By Robert Gammon

April 2, 2008
Ben Harbor.

Drivers can't pull all the way forward at this Solano Avenue bus stop.

Drivers also complain about the quality of their bathrooms.
Ben Harbor found out what happens when you cross a staunch supporter of AC Transit's expensive Belgian buses. The longtime bus driver got in a shouting match a few years ago with Jaimie Levin, the agency's director of marketing and chief cheerleader for the controversial Van Hool buses. After the argument, an angry Levin told Harbor he would regret what happened. Sure enough, a few months later, the public agency fired Harbor. But today, the bus driver is enjoying the last laugh.

The run-in began in early 2004. Harbor and other bus drivers had been complaining that the Van Hools' distinctive three-door design make them tough to maneuver because they require a wide turning radius. At the time, Harbor was driving the old No. 43 line from Oakland to Berkeley. Harbor said that one stop in particular, at Solano and Peralta avenues in North Berkeley, was so tight that it was unsafe to pull a Van Hool completely to the curb.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/can-a28.shtml

Toronto Transit workers forced back to work by strike-breaking law

By Carl Bronski
28 April 2008

A thirty-six hour strike by the nine thousand members of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Workers union ended abruptly Sunday afternoon, when the trade union-backed New Democratic Party joined with the other two parties in the Ontario legislature to unanimously pass an emergency back-to-work order.

The legislation, initiated by Liberal provincial Premier Dalton McGuinty, calls for the appointment of a labour arbitrator to decide outstanding issues in the dispute between the union and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). The order also threatened a two thousand dollar per day fine for any transit worker defying the law and a twenty-five thousand dollar per day penalty for the union should it resist the order.

Just as they did with the garbage strike in Toronto in 2002, Howard Hampton and the other New Democratic Party members of the assembly wholeheartedly supported the Liberals and Conservatives in their rush to crush the strike. The legislation was also heralded by Toronto Mayor David Miller, a Clintonesque politician who has received support from the unofficial NDP group in city council, even whilst overseeing a fifteen year tax plan that is geared toward massively redistributing wealth in the city from tenants and homeowners to big commercial interests.

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor - Berkeley Daily Planet, September 11, 2007

Negotiations between the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 on a two-year contract that expired last June have been extended on a month-to-month basis.

But with AC Transit officials calling the talk extensions “not unusual,” and with union officials not answering press inquiries, an underground, unaffiliated group of bus operators are worried that their concerns and grievances are not going to be met in the new contract.

Group members have threatened a walkout if their demands are not met, but it is uncertain how many bus operators they represent, and whether a wildcat strike—not authorized by the union—could succeed.

For several months, group members have been circulating anonymous newsletters called “The Bus” and “The Open Letter” among the 1,800 operators and mechanics represented by Local 192. Group members say they must stay anonymous for fear of losing their jobs.

“We don’t know what’s going on with the contract talks,” one of “The Bus” publishers said in an interview last week. “The union’s not letting us know.”

A spokesperson for AC Transit said that the district would not talk about any of the group’s concerns that might be the subject of the current contract negotiations.

“It’s really improper to negotiate in the newspaper,” AC Tranist Director of Communications and External Affairs Mary King said this week by telephone. King said, however, that she would personally look into other grievances presented by the group that might not be part of the contract talks.

“We should find a way to resolve them, or at least lessen their impact on our employees,” King said.

Two years ago, AC Transit and ATU Local 192 agreed to a two-year deal that gave bus drivers and mechanics a 3 percent raise and a $3 million a year district contribution to a health care trust fund for retired district employees.

But “The Bus” underground transit newsletter representative said that it is working conditions as well as money that are on bus operators’ minds around the district this year.

“We’ve got a long list of grievances that aren’t being addressed,” the representative said.

In a release sent out to media outlets late last month, the group listed an annual cost-of living increase, full compensation for all bus operators (including new hires), “a more sufficient retirement plan,” and a “modified medical plan” as among its grievances.

“Other concerns,” the group added in its media release, “are the unsafe driving conditions, and unsafe vanpool buses transporting the elderly. We are prepared, if our obligations are not met, to initiate a walkout.”

Meanwhile, in a leaflet labeled “Contract Issues” that was circulated among drivers earlier this year, the group charged that AC Transit “screws” new drivers to the tune of $8 less per hour and $16,000 less per year during their probationary first year of work with the district.

“We all do the same work,” the drivers’ group wrote. “Actually, newest drivers do the harder runs in general.”

The leaflet also charged that under the current contract, drivers receive a written reprimand if they take a sick day off any time their medical leave accrual drops below 24 days.

One of the specific grievances, the newsletter representative said in the Daily Planet interview, involved what the representative called “unsafe” conditions when drivers use the restroom during late nights on some lines.

“We get a break during the layover at the end of the lines, and that’s when drivers are able to use the restroom,” the newsletter representative said. But the end of the line layover for the 18 line is at Marin and San Pablo avenues, the representative said, with the only available restroom a two-and-a-half to three-block walk down San Pablo Avenue to a donut shop.

“That’s dangerous late at night, especially for the female drivers,” the representative said.

He added that the available restrooms for the 40, the 12, and the 15 lines were even worse. That layover is at 11th and Jefferson, site of the Lafayette Square park.

“The only restrooms are in the park,” the newsletter representative said. “At night, you’ve got to share them with the prostitutes and the crackheads smoking dope and shooting up.”

On some lines, some AC Transit bus drivers have been independently observed leaving passengers on their buses at a stop in the middle of the line to go into a nearby fast food restaurant to use the restroom.

Meanwhile, a leaflet published last March by a group of anonymous drivers signing themselves as the “Emeryville Division Action Committee” charges that AC Transit is skimping on the federally required 30-minute meal period for drives, and that action is causing a safety problem for passengers.

The leaflet, issued shortly before the new AC Transit schedules went into effect this summer and entitled “RIDER ALERT! Help Us Stop Unsafe Schedules! Drivers are Human Beings—Not Robots” reads in part: “How would you like a job where your longest break all day is SIX MINUTES? SIX MINUTES to eat, SIX MINUTES to walk a block to wait in line to use the restroom, SIX MINUTES to unwind and load passengers again, SIX WHOLE MINUTES—IF YOU’RE ON TIME? Is this job for human beings or ROBOTS?” The leaflet goes on to say that “While longer main lines have longer breaks on paper, there’s more traffic, passengers, questions, and wheelchairs to cut into those breaks, too.”

One of the contract demands the group has listed in its “CONTRACT ISSUES” leaflet is that all driver runs include a 30-minute meal break and two paid, 15-minute rest periods.

AC Transit Director of Communications and External Affairs Mary King said that while she had not seen any of the group’s newsletters and had not heard the specific grievances prior to being contacted by the Daily Planet, she was personally familiar with some of the issues that the group had raised.

“When I first came to AC Transit two and one-half years ago, there was no place for drivers to use the restroom” in the 11th and Jefferson streets area, King said. “The park facilities were locked at night, and city officials didn’t want to have them open for safety reasons. I personally worked out an arrangement with the city to give our drivers access.”

King said she had not heard of any problems with driver use of the Lafayette Square facilities since then, and thought that the deal with the city included having the restroom facilities locked, with drivers provided a key code.

She said she was unfamiliar with the allegations about the use of the donut shop on the 18 line and would look into it.

King said that other issues raised in the group’s newsletters and releases “appear to be matters which are subject to the contract negotiations” and therefore couldn’t be commented on by the district.

OPINION Last week the Board of Supervisors received a proposed charter amendment that takes a misguided stab at the much-needed reform of the Municipal Transit Agency, which oversees Muni. In undertaking reforms we all agree are needed for the MTA to better serve our city, the supervisors should consider the Hippocratic oath required of doctors: "First, do no harm."

Our union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents almost a thousand MTA workers, has enormous respect for the bill's sponsor, board president Aaron Peskin. We know that Peskin strongly supports workers' rights and has always stood for openness, transparency, and accountability in government. This initiative, however, undermines everything that he and his board colleagues stand for, and we urge progressives to oppose it.

Most important, the initiative is profoundly undemocratic and would transfer oversight from an elected body to an appointed one.

An MTA that no longer had to answer to our elected representatives would be a less accountable and less transparent board.

Downgrading elected oversight into appointive power resting in the hands of one person — the mayor — is not reform but a political power grab. Commissioners would be well aware that they might not be reappointed if they voted too independently of the mayor's preferences.

Originally posted here

After working without a contract since before Katrina, almost every city bus driver called in sick Friday morning, stranding commuters who were left waiting in the rain.

By Leslie Williams - The Times-Picayune, May 4, 2007.

Of the 65 Regional Transit Authority bus drivers and streetcar operators that were supposed to show up for work at 9 a.m. Friday, 61 called in sick, stranding thousands of passengers who use the public transit system in New Orleans to get to work and others who take to it to the Fair Ground to play a Jazzfest.

"The sick out came as a surprise," Rosalind Blanco Cook, an RTA spokeswoman said shortly after the blue Friday began. "The president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Joseph Prieur, and management are meeting now to see what can be done to get full service back on the street as soon as possible."

The union has complained about wages, she said.

City buses and streetcars transported about 14,000 people over the three-day weekend to and from Jazzfest, but it's not clear what impact the sick out will have today, she said, because it's not clear how long this will last.

Disclaimer - This article is being reposted here for informational purposes. It's author doesn't necessarily support the aims of this website and its members.

By Amy Zimmer - Metro New York, May 1, 2007

UPPER WEST SIDE. Following the deaths of two track workers in less than one week, NYC Transit’s temporary suspension of maintenance and construction continues until more than 6,000 workers receive “re-training.” But members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 yesterday said that wasn’t good enough — and called for radios to help improve their communication with different departments.

“We need more coordination,” Percival Thomas, 52, a track worker for seven years, said at a press conference at union headquarters yesterday after “burying one of our brothers,” Daniel Boggs, 42. Boggs was killed last Tuesday night by a 3 train at the Columbus Circle station, and Marvin Franklin, 55, was killed on Sunday after being struck by a G train at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station. That incident is still under investigation.